The CEO AI Confidence Gap Is Costing Enterprises Billions
The CEO AI Confidence Gap Is Costing Enterprises Billions
Publish Date: 2026-05-25 14:29:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
A robot pours popcorn from a cooking pot into a bowl on March 8, 2017 at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI) of the university of Bremen, northwestern Germany. – Scientists of the institute work among others on “AI-based control methods for robotic agents, performing human-scale everyday manipulation-task”, and investigate “computing systems that assist humans at home, at work and during leisure activities”. – Germany OUT (Photo by Ingo Wagner / dpa / AFP) / Germany OUT (Photo by INGO WAGNER/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
dpa/AFP via Getty Images
Box CEO Aaron Levie has a name for what afflicts most C-suites deploying AI: AI psychosis. Executives sit far enough from front-line workflows that when they test an AI tool, they see only the happy path, never the ten or twenty steps that have to happen after the prototype before any agent delivers sustainable results. The gap between a polished demo and a production-grade system is where most enterprise AI investments go to die.
Levie’s diagnosis is backed by data. 42% of companies abandoned most AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% the prior year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. The average organization scrapped nearly half its AI proofs-of-concept before they reached production. The companies still standing in that wreckage are now where the real capital is flowing.
The Capital Is Watching
Venture capital has not lost faith in AI agents. It has simply recalibrated where it bets. Agentic AI companies raised $2.66 billion across 44 rounds in the first four months of 2026, compared to $1.09 billion in the same period a year earlier, per MarketsandMarkets. Average round size for agentic AI startups nearly doubled, reaching $155 million, as investors concentrate capital on companies that have crossed $100 million ARR and demonstrated production-grade reliability, not demo-grade novelty.
The global AI agents market was valued at $7.84 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $52.62 billion by 2030. But…
