IDC Pre-Releases First DAA Report at WAIC 2026: 2.2 Billion Active AI Agents by 2030

At the 2026 World AI Conference (WAIC), IDC pre-released its landmark DAA (Digital AI Agent) Research Report, the industry's first systematic framework for evaluating AI agent business value.

The report's core forecast is striking: the number of active AI agents globally will grow from approximately 28.6 million in 2025 to 79.4 million in 2026, and reach 2.216 billion by 2030. This represents a nearly 80-fold increase in digital workers capable of executing enterprise tasks, with a compound annual growth rate of 139%.

DAA — the new metric introduced in the report — evaluates AI agents across dimensions including task completion capability, business impact, and scalability. The framework aims to address a persistent industry challenge: while AI agents are widely deployed, measuring their actual business value has remained difficult.

The report also maps AI agent adoption trajectories across industries, from customer service and coding assistance to enterprise process automation. IDC identifies cloud infrastructure providers and model-layer technology suppliers as key leverage points in this ecosystem expansion.

Chinese tech companies including Baidu showcased DAA-aligned Agent applications at WAIC. Baidu CEO Robin Li emphasized that the DAA metric will help enterprises more clearly measure AI return on investment, pushing agents from technical concepts toward commercial viability.

IDC's DAA pre-release signals that the AI agent industry is transitioning from rapid, unstructured growth into an era of standardized valuation. The central question has shifted from "what can agents do" to "how much quantifiable business value do they create." In the coming years, DAA is positioned to become a benchmark for measuring AI's economic contribution.