The Agentic AI Boom Will Be Worth $155 Billion By 2030, Analyst Names Key Beneficiaries

A recent report from Bank of America Securities (BofA) highlights a significant, yet currently underestimated, medium-term surge in software spending driven by AI agents.

While the market has shown some caution due to an “underwhelming generative AI adoption or monetization cycle” so far, BofA believes that “agentic functionality” could be the key to unlocking substantial revenue.

BofA’s “deep dive” into agentic AI suggests that spending on this technology could reach a staggering $155 billion by 2030. This estimate is three times higher than most current industry analyst projections.

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Agentic functionality could be the defining catalyst for AI monetization, as agents can potentially unlock sustainable, measurable, and material workforce productivity improvements, as per BofA.

The analyst leveraged a top-down approach to estimate the potential “services” Total Addressable Market (TAM) capture of agentic AI (with services representing human salaries or wages).

BofA estimated global knowledge worker wages across seven major occupation categories (sales, finance, and IT) are $18.6 trillion annually.

The analyst noted it is reasonable to assume that agents will perform 10% of workflows for this cohort of employees by 2030, representing $1.9 trillion in automation-driven value.

Assuming software vendors can capture roughly 8% of this value (representing 12 times customer ROI on agentic spending), this would equate to global agentic AI spending of $155 billion, as per BofA.

The analyst presented surveys summarizing the state of agentic AI adoption, general agentic investment posture, and job functions best suited for agents. Responses indicate that 64% of organizations expect to pursue agentic AI initiatives in 2025, per BofA.

However, the analyst noted that agentic AI initiatives remain in the early stages of deployment, with 53% in the exploration stage, 25% in the pilot stage, and only 6% of organizations in production (as of January 2025).

Unsurprisingly, surveys indicate that customer service, marketing, sales, and software development are likely to be the first significant job functions to adopt agentic technologies, BofA said.

Key AI beneficiaries in BofA coverage included Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) (with the Azure or OpenAI partnership and Microsoft 365 product cycles), Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) (Agentforce), ServiceNow, Inc. (NYSE:NOW) (Now Assist), Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) (Intuit Assist for QuickBooks and TurboTax), HubSpot, Inc. (NYSE:HUBS) (Breeze AI agents), GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) (Duo) and OneStream, Inc. (NASDAQ:OS) (SensibleAI).

As per the analyst, these firms possess the key ingredients for AI success and monetization, notably large customer datasets, robust data management, or governance capabilities. BofA said these companies also have publicly or in beta agentic AI features or products available today. The analyst expects monetization to begin ramping in calendar 2026.

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