For many months now, AI companies have made a huge deal out of \u201cAI agents,\u201d meaning autonomous software systems that can make decisions and take actions on behalf of humans with minimal intervention.<\/p>\n
But when that ambitious vision will turn into a reality remains anybody\u2019s guess. The current crop of agentic AI models is still getting easily tripped up, often requiring humans to jump in, effectively undercutting their purpose.<\/p>\n
The numbers remain dismal. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found earlier this year<\/a> that even the best-performing AI agent, which was Google\u2019s Gemini 2.5 Pro at the time, failed to complete\u00a0real-world office tasks<\/a>\u00a070 percent of the time.<\/p>\n And this summer, OpenAI released its ChatGPT agent<\/a>, promising that it can \u201cdo work for you using its own computer, handling complex tasks from start to finish.\u201d But in reality, users found the experience lackluster, calling it \u201cnot very useful<\/a>,\u201d \u201cshaky<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cslow<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n As such, it shouldn\u2019t come as much of a surprise that Microsoft is struggling to sell its enterprise clients on its own take on agentic AI. As The Information reports<\/a>, the company\u2019s Azure salespeople are seriously struggling to meet some extremely ambitious sales growth targets, cutting quotas by up to 50 percent earlier this year.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s stock sank over 2.5 percent on Wednesday, showing that investors are unimpressed by the tepid sales results.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the tech giant went into damage control mode, with a spokesperson telling Bloomberg<\/a> in a statement that \u201cThe Information\u2019s story inaccurately combines the concepts of growth and sales quotas\u201d and that \u201caggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless, the dustup suggests that enterprise customers are far from convinced that large AI agents are ready to autonomously complete complex multistep tasks. It\u2019s yet another indication that companies are struggling<\/a> to convert the enormous hype surrounding generative AI into actual revenue, a concerning trend considering the billions of dollars AI companies are burning through right now with no end \u2014 or return on investment<\/a> \u2014 in sight.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like Microsoft\u2019s clients are being unreasonable. Generative AI continues to struggle with the absolute basics, and hallucinations remain a major pain point<\/a>. Multiply the potential for an AI to make up facts as it attempts to complete a more nuanced, multistep project, and the chances of it tripping up rise even further.<\/p>\n In short, the future that\u2019s being sold to these customers simply hasn\u2019t materialized. And that could hamper AI companies\u2019 sky-high expectations when it comes to monetizing the tech.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s competition ratcheting up the pressure for Microsoft. In June, Bloomberg reported<\/a> that workers preferred to use OpenAI, which was cutting into its ability to sell its Copilot.<\/p>\n Fortunately for Microsoft, most of its current revenues come from renting out cloud computing infrastructure to AI companies, not selling AI products to enterprise customers, as The Information notes.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the cracks are starting to show, indicating sales could continue to lag behind goals as customers realize they might be being sold a vision of a distant future.<\/p>\n