Legacy Data Blocks AI Agents at Most Companies
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- MIT Technology Review Insights surveyed 300 data and technology executives and found AI agents only access an average of 45% of company data, dropping to 30% or less among "data laggards" but rising above 70% among a small group of "data leaders."
- Data leaders trust their AI agents' decisions at a rate of 100%, compared to roughly half of all surveyed organizations — a gap the report ties directly to data readiness.
- Legacy data systems are limiting AI agent scaling for 66% of data laggards and preventing real-time decision-making for 68%, while only 8% of data leaders report either constraint.
- All 100% of respondents plan to be using agentic AI within two years, with 69% expecting to deploy it widely — yet most haven't removed the data infrastructure bottlenecks standing in the way.
- Improving access to both structured and unstructured enterprise data ranks as the top initiative for scaling AI agents across all respondents, followed by enhancing data and AI governance with business context.
- The report, sponsored by Google Cloud, cites Gartner's prediction that AI agents will augment or automate 50% of business decisions by 2027 as evidence that data-readiness gaps must be closed urgently.
Why it matters: The gap between data leaders and laggards is stark: leaders are roughly 8x less likely to face legacy-system constraints and 2x more likely to trust their agents' outputs. For the 92% of laggards whose legacy infrastructure is blocking agent performance, the report frames data modernization not as a tech upgrade but as a prerequisite for capturing any ROI from agentic AI before widespread adoption hits within two years.
Ask SkimNews
