2025 Review: The Year of AI Agents

Summary: Core Thesis, Key Insights and Strategic Recommendations

Core Thesis:
2025 crowned AI agents as undisputed protagonists of digital transformation, driving productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage for companies and sectors of all sizes in Brazil and worldwide.

Key Insights:

• The use of AI agents in Brazilian companies grew by more than 100% in the first half alone, especially in sectors such as finance, retail, services, and telecom.
• Banks, the public sector, and large organizations accelerated results by adopting autonomous agents for customer service, fraud prevention, credit automation, and process simplification.
• Companies mature in data and AI reported average productivity gains of 14% and up to 9% in financial results throughout the year.
• 67% of Brazilian companies prioritized AI as their main innovation bet, promoting radical changes in culture, strategy, and work structure.
• The innovation cycle will remain accelerated in 2026, with multimodal advances, total personalization, data and compliance revolution, and business model reinvention.

Strategic Recommendations:

• Strengthen AI investments, prioritizing autonomous agent projects in critical and high-impact routines.
• Prepare the organization for multimodal models and hyper-personalized experiences, reviewing data and compliance strategies.
• Encourage cultural change, promoting a continuous learning mindset and digital protagonism at all levels of the company.
• Evaluate business models and partnerships aimed at integrating AI agents to accelerate efficiency, innovation, and competitive value.
• Monitor productivity and satisfaction indicators, adjusting the scale of agents according to the evolution of maturity and tangible return.

Key Advances in the Brazilian and Global Landscape

• Accelerated adoption: More than 100% growth in the use of AI agents in the first half of 2025 alone, especially in the financial, retail, services, and telecommunications sectors.
• Sector specialization: Banks and financial institutions bet on automated support, fraud prevention, and credit automation. In the public sector, chatbots simplified services and expanded access to the population.
• Real impact: Organizations that integrated generative AI and autonomous agents observed average increases of over 14% in productivity and up to 9% in financial gains, redefining strategies and business models.
• Cultural change: 67% of Brazilian corporations chose AI as a strategic priority, boosting competitiveness and sustainability.
• Work transformation: Agents took on more complex and autonomous tasks, enabling human service escalation only for higher value-added situations.

Trends for 2026 and Beyond

• The global AI agents market is expected to exceed US$ 7.6 billion by the end of 2025.
• By 2027, half of companies are expected to operate critical routines with autonomous agents.
• Key trends include:
  • Multimodal models (text, image, audio, video integrated)
  • Hyper-personalized digital experiences
  • Transformation of data management, security, and compliance
  • Reinvention of platform and software businesses

Conclusion

2025 consolidated AI agents as a key piece of technology strategies. They drove efficiency gains, innovation, and competitive positioning. Leadership now belongs to those who continue investing, scaling, and reinventing the use of AI to deliver sustainable excellence and relevance in an ever-evolving market.

About the Author

Rodrigo Bornholdt is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Zappts, specialized in Software Architecture and Artificial Intelligence, with solid experience in technology team leadership, complex systems development, and innovation applied to business strategies.

About Zappts

Zappts is a Brazilian technology and innovation company that for over 10 years has been creating, modernizing, and evolving secure and scalable digital solutions for large organizations. Combining practical experience in software engineering, data, and artificial intelligence, it integrates technology, methodology, and processes, accelerating value delivery with efficiency, quality, and governance. Its operations span from strategy to software application and AI development, being a reference in Brazil on intelligent agents and agentic transformation. Click here to learn more.

Sources: 

• NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), in collaboration with researchers from Stanford and MIT. The Study: “Generative AI at Work” (Brynjolfsson, Li, Raymond – Published/Revised in 2023).
• Bain & Company. The Report: “The State of Generative AI” (Data released in 2024 and applied to regional breakdowns).
• MarketsandMarkets. The Report: “Autonomous AI and Autonomous Agents Market – Global Forecast to 2028”.
• Bain & Company (Brazil Breakdown)
• MIT CISR (Center for Information Systems Research)