KPMG finds 49% of companies cut AI agent rollouts when costs outran value

KPMG research found that 49% of companies cut back their AI agent rollouts when deployment costs outran the value delivered, according to a finding reported by PPC Land.

The headline conclusion is blunt: the cost-value imbalance has become a decisive reason enterprises are scaling back agent deployments.

AI agents are widely seen as the next wave of enterprise generative AI adoption, with pilots running across customer support, coding assistance, and internal process automation.

KPMG's numbers suggest that when pilots move toward scale, nearly half of organizations hit the brakes once costs outpaced returns, making ROI validation a hard gate for agent projects.

The signal matters for vendors: demo-driven selling is no longer enough. Enterprise buyers increasingly demand measurable cost savings and business value before expanding agent rollouts.

What to watch next is the full methodology and sample behind KPMG's survey, and whether companies shift agent budgets toward more contained use cases or wait for costs to fall before restarting expansion.