Gartner Inc

Gartner Inc. has released its Top Strategic Predictions for 2027 and beyond, covering three main themes: Robots Everywhere, Cost to Value, and Unknown Unknowns. Daryl Plummer, Vice President of Research and Gartner Fellow, said that systems ranging from public services to software, energy models, and labor will be completely transformed by AI over the next decade, and that the most successful organizations will be those that balance innovation with responsibility. Gartner expects that by the end of 2030, more than 10 billion autonomous agents created by people, companies, and governments will be disrupting public services, while as many as 80% of frontline workers at multinational companies will be assisted by Physical AI systems, and organizations that use AI connected to public services, roughly 80% of them, will face Cost Exhaustion Attacks that drive AI costs artificially high. On the energy front, 10 trillion dollars in energy assets held by large enterprises will change the game, turning Global 2000 companies into unexpected power producers. Meanwhile, insurers rather than regulators will drive AI governance, and 80% of Global 500 companies will write into contracts that their CIO or CAIO serves as the custodian of evidence for AI accountability.

Gartner shares rose 7.7% in the afternoon session after the research and advisory firm opened its IT Symposium/Xpo conference in Australia, where analysts presented guidance on deploying agentic artificial intelligence, governance, and driving business value. The company highlighted how rapid AI advancements and modern governance frameworks are reshaping public sector operations and service delivery, reinforcing its role as an advisory partner for enterprise and public sector IT leaders. The move follows a 4% drop 10 days earlier, when a Gartner survey of 1,303 senior executives found that only 22% of organizations have successfully scaled AI across multiple business units or adopted an AI-first approach, even as 85% of leaders plan to increase AI investments in 2026 and devote an average of 12% of their functional budgets to the technology. Gartner is down 17.7% year to date and trades at $195.03 per share, 26.2% below its 52-week high of $264.09 from September 2025.

Salesforce is touting 7 billion Agentic Work Units, its proprietary activity measure, as proof of momentum for its Agentforce platform, which has reached $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue, but that headline sits alongside five competing industry metrics that measure entirely different things. Gartner predicts over 40% of agentic projects will be canceled by 2027 due to costs and unclear value, while McKinsey finds 93% of enterprises are overspending on AI and that 60% of total agentic AI spend goes to iterative response refinement rather than initial inference. S&P Global Market Intelligence and MIT data show 80% of apps embedding AI but only 31% of organizations actually running agents in production, and the MIT NANDA report says 95% of generative AI pilots fail to meet CFO expectations. More than 50% of GenAI budgets still flow to sales and marketing even though the most measurable ROI for AI agents is consistently found in back-office automation. Gartner senior director analyst Anushree Verma says most of these projects remain early-stage experiments driven by hype, and Futurum Group's Keith Kirkpatrick says enterprises now demand that every AI capability connect directly to revenue growth or margin improvement, pointing toward standardized cost-per-outcome metrics ahead of Dreamforce 2026 this September.

Gartner predicts that by 2029, the majority of privacy breaches will result from conclusions drawn by AI based on inferred personal data, rather than direct leaks of personal information. Bart Willemsen, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, said we are in the midst of a major shift from data breaches to insight breaches, where AI can reconstruct deep personal insights without breaching traditional data controls. AI inference attacks are particularly dangerous because they often evade conventional detection mechanisms. Gartner also expects that by 2028, spending on data accuracy protection will surge to match investments in data confidentiality. The firm recommends that CISOs and privacy leaders embed AI governance into privacy programs, adopt privacy-enhancing technologies, strengthen data minimization practices, enhance cybersecurity for AI-driven threats, and promote transparency and human oversight.

Research and advisory firm Gartner will report its second-quarter earnings this Tuesday before market open. Analysts expect revenue to decline 2.4% year on year, a reversal from the 5.7% increase in the same quarter last year. The company met revenue expectations last quarter with $1.51 billion, down 1.5% year on year, while beating EPS estimates. Gartner has missed Wall Street revenue estimates multiple times over the last two years, though analyst estimates have been largely reconfirmed over the past 30 days. The stock is up 11.8% over the last month, heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $160.38 compared to the current share price of $151.02.

Bernstein Liebhard LLP has announced an investigation into whether certain directors and officers of Gartner, Inc. breached their fiduciary duties. The law firm is looking into potential breaches and is reaching out to current Gartner shareholders who purchased shares prior to February 24, 2025. Shareholders interested in discussing their legal rights can contact Investor Relations Manager Peter Allocco.