AI Agents and Profit Gains: What Business Leaders Predict for 2025

AI Agents and Profit Gains: What Business Leaders Predict for 2025

The artificial intelligence landscape is shifting from experimental to profitable, with autonomous "agents" leading the charge in 2025. According to top executives at the Reuters NEXT conference, AI systems that can handle daily tasks like scheduling meetings and making purchases without human oversight are no longer just a futuristic concept.

Key Predictions from Industry Leaders

AI Agents Will Surprise Everyone

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar predicts rapid advancement in AI agents, powered by new reasoning capabilities like those in OpenAI's o1 model. "People are going to be surprised at how fast this technology comes at us," Friar said, emphasizing that 2025 will focus on agents helping with everyday tasks.

AGI Timeline Accelerates

Perhaps most striking, Friar forecasts artificial general intelligence (AGI) - where AI surpasses humans in most economically valuable tasks - will arrive "in the shorter term," not a decade away as previously thought.

2025: The Profitability Year

Venture capitalist Molly Alter from Northzone calls 2025 "the year of profitability for AI," shifting focus from pure revenue growth to improved margins. Companies are already seeing results - Insight Partners' George Mathew cites investments like Relevance AI, which offers digital sales teams at a quarter of traditional labor costs.

Real-World Implementation

Major corporations have moved beyond experimentation. At BNY bank, CEO Robin Vince reports thousands of employees now use AI-powered agents for daily tasks, creating "solutions for clients, and insights and data for clients that otherwise would have been almost impossible to derive."

The shift represents a fundamental reimagination of business functions, with AI agents poised to transform both back-office and customer-facing operations across industries.