Generative artificial intelligence continues to dominate headlines, events and strategic conversations in companies. But a silent and much more concrete change is taking place behind the scenes in organizations: the rise of AI agents. That's where the game is really at.
At the Web Summit 2025, held in Lisbon, this distinction became clear to those who follow the practical application of AI in corporate operations. Among demonstrations of increasingly powerful models, what caught the eye was something else: AI agents already doing concrete work within organizations.
A generative model answers a question or produces content. An AI agent navigates systems, integrates tools, follows flows, makes decisions with context and performs end-to-end tasks, with reduced supervision. This capacity for autonomous execution is what makes agents so relevant to the corporate environment, and it's what many companies still underestimate.
There is one point that escapes most analysis on the subject: agents only work where there is already operational maturity. AI amplifies what it finds. Well-structured processes gain speed; chaotic processes scale in chaos.
The companies that advance the fastest are those that have first invested in getting their house in order. This means
Far from being the most glamorous part of digital transformation, this groundwork is what separates those who lead from those who lag behind. At Foursys, we have been supporting companies on this journey for over two decades. Experience shows that the technological foundation matters as much as the technology itself.
One of the most striking aspects of the discussions at Web Summit 2025 was the speed with which concrete results are being achieved. The distance between concept and impact has never been shorter. When this pace is combined with the ability to scale, and global investments in AI continue to grow at a rapid pace, the result goes beyond improving existing operations. Operations themselves are redesigned.
With the advance of agents, data has become even more critical and more complex to manage. Pure text is no longer enough. To operate consistently, agents need:
It is precisely at this point that the most serious challenges arise: consent, traceability, governance and responsibility for decisions made autonomously. When an agent accesses internal documents or interacts with critical systems and something goes wrong, the problem is no longer a technical one but a direct risk to the business. Security, in this scenario, acts as a condition of entry.
Another relevant movement concerns the advancement of agents directly on devices, without relying exclusively on the cloud. Privacy, latency and costs make this approach increasingly attractive to companies seeking greater control over their data and operations.
With this distributed architecture gaining momentum, the next 12 to 24 months should bring much more autonomous agents, capable of making decisions based on policies, history and objectives with minimal supervision. The analogy with digital colleagues is beginning to make practical sense.
The industry is going through a unique moment. Companies from all sectors are testing, failing, learning and scaling solutions in real time, in a cycle that has rarely existed before at this speed.
The competition has also changed focus. Building the biggest model is no longer the central objective. The competition that will define leaders will be about who builds the most useful, secure agent ecosystem that adheres most closely to companies' operational realities.
GenAI is still in the spotlight, but the most profound transformation is taking place at another level. Agents are already freeing teams from repetitive tasks, speeding up operations with consistency and scale, reducing errors in critical processes and opening up space for professionals to focus on the work that really requires strategic thinking. This revolution is not waiting for the distant future. It is already underway.
This post was inspired by the opinion piece published on SAPO by Maurício Teixeira Barbieri, Managing Director Europe at Foursys, after Web Summit 2025.
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