G2 Launches First-Ever Best Agentic AI Software Awards List: 57% of Enterprises Already Have AI Agents in Production

G2, the largest software review platform, has introduced its first-ever Best Agentic AI Software awards list for 2026, marking a definitive signal that AI agents have moved from experimental demos to a recognized enterprise software category. Salesforce Agentforce topped the inaugural ranking based on verified user reviews and market presence data.

According to G2 2025 AI Agents Insights Report, based on a survey of over 1,000 B2B decision-makers, 57% of companies already have AI agents in production. More than half said they were highly likely to expand scope or budgets over the next 12 months. The agentic AI market is projected to surpass $47 billion by 2030 according to Statista.

The G2 analysis identifies a critical shift in buyer behavior. The first wave of agentic AI was about capability, asking can an agent complete a task. The current wave is about implementation and scaling, asking can it complete a task within a real workflow, using real data, and under real governance.

Salesforce CMO for Australia and New Zealand Leandro Perez described Agentforce as a system of agency operating across marketing, sales, service, and field operations with a unified data layer. He demonstrated a PepsiCo deployment where a marketing agent, sales agent, customer service agent, and field technician AI work in sequence across the entire customer lifecycle.

The report found 83% of buyers are satisfied with agent performance and the median time to first meaningful outcome is six months or less. However, scaling from single deployment to company-wide use faces four common traps: the DIY approach fallacy, trying to automate everything at once, neglecting data readiness, and deploying agents without ongoing management.

Perez framing of agents as digital labor that must be onboarded, monitored, and managed like employees reflects the maturation of the category. G2 recognition means agentic AI now has the review volume and deployment density to merit its own software awards category, alongside CRM, ERP, and other established enterprise categories.

This also signals a shift from an evaluation landscape dominated by vendor marketing to one driven by verified peer reviews, making it harder for unproven startups to compete without real deployment track records.