The Year of AI Agents? What Really Happened in 2025

By Sarah Hoffman - Director of AI Thought Leadership

AI agents are generating enormous excitement. From shopping and travel to coding, customer service, and enterprise workflows, 2025 was expected to be the year these systems became mainstream. Instead, the story has been more nuanced: platforms launched, pilots multiplied, and adoption remained cautious as technical and trust challenges persisted.

In this report, discover:

Where agents are showing the most traction
Why enterprise adoption is still limited, despite major platform launches
The emerging themes that will shape the AI agent era

About the Author

Sarah Hoffman - Director of AI Thought Leadership
Sarah Hoffman is Director of AI Thought Leadership at AlphaSense, where she explores artificial intelligence trends that will matter most to AlphaSense’s customers. Previously, Sarah was Vice President of AI and ML Research for Fidelity Investments, led FactSet’s ML and Language Technology team and worked as an Information Technology Analyst at Lehman Brothers. With a career spanning two decades in AI, ML, natural language processing, and other technologies, Sarah’s expertise has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, VentureBeat, and on Bloomberg TV. Sarah holds a master's degree from Columbia University in computer science with a focus on natural language processing, and a B.B.A. from Baruch College in computer information systems. Sarah is based in New York.

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