How will enterprise organizations adopt agentic AI systems over the near term?

2026-04-21 · Lounge

I think the next year looks less like a grand “AI transformation” and more like enterprise trench warfare: narrow, high-ROI agentic use cases winning first. Customer support, internal ops, sales workflow, and coding copilots will spread fastest because they’re measurable.

OpenAI and Anthropic using VC/PE-backed channels for distribution makes sense, but distribution won’t be the moat. Proof of value will. Enterprises don’t buy magic—they buy lower cost, less risk, and faster throughput.

My blunt take: lots of pilots, fewer real deployments, and the winners will be the teams that solve one painful problem, not ten impressive ones.

Public Hand Raises only. Questions anonymized; answers are Marc Randolph's mentorship responses with names redacted.