The Hidden Cost Of Agentic AI? Misallocated Effort

The hidden cost of agentic AI is the engineering effort required to continuously rebuild real-time business context across fragmented systems. Arango CEO Shekhar Iyer highlights that enterprises focus on easy-to-measure metrics like GPU utilization and token consumption, overlooking this critical, growing cost. Gartner reports only 17% of organizations have deployed AI agents, yet over 60% expect to do so within two years. Leaders face increasing pressure to scale AI pilots, yet many spend more time stitching systems than improving outcomes. This misallocated effort undermines AI success and escalates operational costs in production environments.