A note on scope for European readers: this dossier contains no EU companies, no EU regulation and no European market data. Every company in it is North American, Japanese or US-based, so we have not stretched it into a European story. What follows is the global picture that European businesses are buying into, with the governance questions that matter most to them.
The headline: universal intent, shaky evidence
The most quoted claim in this story is that, within two years, 100% of surveyed organisations plan to use agentic AI, with 69% expecting to use it widely.1 The same piece says that in organisations classed as 'data laggards', AI access to company data falls to 30% or less.1 Via News's own summary of the coverage also cites figures of about 45% of company data being accessible to AI and only around half of organisations trusting their agents' decisions, attributed to a Google Cloud survey. Those two figures are not among the claims we could check against the source text. Treat them as unverified.
The source needs the same caution. The article is "Scaling AI agents with trustworthy data" from MIT Technology Review. Our measured reliability record for it is poor: 0% of 11 checked claims held up.1 That is a small sample, and it does not mean the survey is wrong. It does mean you should not treat any single percentage from it as settled.
What the audited numbers can and cannot tell you
The only fidelity-checked numbers in our dossier come from SEC filings for Nvidia, the chipmaker whose tools sit under much of this agent ecosystem. The dossier links Nvidia to products such as NeMo Guardrails, the NeMo Agent Toolkit and the Nemotron 3 Super model, and to customers including Mount Sinai Health System and Yum! Brands.
Nvidia's cost of revenue, the direct cost of what it sells, rose from $16.621 billion in fiscal 2024 to $32.639 billion in fiscal 2025 and $62.475 billion in fiscal 2026.2 That is more than a threefold rise in two years. It is also about six times the company's fiscal 2026 cash balance of $10.605 billion.3 We have no outside comparison in the dossier to make these sums feel larger or smaller, and we will not invent one.
Cash is less steady. Nvidia held $7.28 billion in fiscal 2024 and $8.589 billion in fiscal 2025.3 Quarterly figures swing more: $15.234 billion at the first quarter of fiscal 2026, falling to $11.639 billion in the second and $11.486 billion in the third, then $13.237 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027.3 Earnings per share were $11.93 in fiscal 2024, $2.94 in fiscal 2025 and $4.90 in fiscal 2026.4 The dossier does not explain that swing, so do not read it as a collapse in profit. We cannot say whether you already own Nvidia through a fund, because the dossier carries no index weightings.
None of this proves enterprise AI demand. It shows the supplier side is spending heavily to serve it. Whether customers can use what they buy is the question the rest of the dossier addresses.
Incumbents are buying governance, not just models
The large-company announcements are about control as much as capability. Manulife and Microsoft announced a renewed five-year agreement, with Manulife adopting Microsoft's Frontier Suite, deploying Microsoft Agent 365 and expanding Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 employees.5 Manulife's Shamus Weiland said the partnership is "a critical enabler of Manulife's continued evolution into a truly AI-driven organization".5 The release was headlined as accelerating enterprise AI governance as well as innovation.5 Its source, NewsEOD, has a measured reliability of 57% of 4,954 checked claims holding up.5 That is a press-release feed, so read it as what the companies say about themselves.
Box announced agent guardrails, third-party agent activity oversight, prompt injection detection and agent classification-based access policies.6 Nomura Research Institute's Tatsutoshi Murata said he expects Box to "provide the administrative features needed to safely leverage this new era of AI".6 The NewsEOD feed's 57% reliability applies here too.6
Our analysis: the pattern across both announcements is that large organisations are spending on controlling agents, not only on building them. That fits the trust gap the survey describes, though the survey's own numbers remain unverified.
Startups are pricing against labour, not software
Several vertical startups define their markets by the work humans do today. Penguin AI's Glenn Herzberg says US healthcare administration runs about a trillion dollars a year, about a quarter of total health spend, with published estimates putting around $570 billion of it in work that has no effect on health outcomes.7 That $570 billion is a published estimate quoted by a company with a commercial interest in the number.
Covecta's Ben Thomas says its addressable market is tens of thousands of financial institutions globally, and that "we are not just disrupting their software budget but their labor budget as well".8 Covecta currently serves customers across the US and UK and aspires to go global.8 The UK is the only European market in this dossier. It is also outside the EU.
Maisa AI's David Villalon describes his market as process automation of core business tasks at regulated industries, covering back office, operations and finance, where work must be auditable, reproducible and hallucination resistant.9 That requirement lines up with what the governance vendors above are selling.
Investors are paying attention to the same pattern. Primary partner Emily Man said of the Casap founders that they had "experienced the pain points of disputes firsthand at their respective large fintech companies" and saw how much internal effort it took to solve them even with a strong engineering team.10 That is one investor describing one portfolio company, not market-wide evidence.
What to watch
- Whether the 45% and 'around half' figures can be traced to a primary survey document. Until they can, lean on the checked claims.
- Nvidia's quarterly filings. Cost of revenue and cash are the checked indicators of how hard the supply side is being pushed.
- Governance product launches. Box, Microsoft and Nvidia all now sell agent controls, which suggests customers are asking for them.
- European coverage. The dossier has no EU regulatory material. When it does, that is where this story becomes directly relevant to European businesses.
