AI Agents and AI-Ready Data Lead Gartner's 2025 Hype Cycle for AI

AI agents and AI-ready data are the two fastest advancing technologies on the 2025 Gartner Hype Cycle for AI, placing them at the Peak of Inflated Expectations. “With AI investment remaining strong this year, a sharper emphasis is being placed on using AI for operational scalability and real-time intelligence,” says Gartner’s Haritha Khandabattu. “This has led to a gradual pivot from generative AI (GenAI) as a central focus, toward the foundational enablers that support sustainable AI delivery, such as AI agents.” Among the AI innovations Gartner expects will reach mainstream adoption within the next five years, multimodal AI and AI trust, risk and security management (TRiSM) have been identified as dominating the Peak of Inflated Expectations.

Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence 2025

Source: Gartner (August 2025) “Despite the enormous potential business value of AI, it isn’t going to materialize spontaneously,” says Khandabattu. “Success will depend on tightly business aligned pilots, proactive infrastructure benchmarking, and coordination between AI and business teams to create tangible business value.” AI agents are autonomous or semiautonomous software entities that use AI techniques to perceive, make decisions, take actions, and achieve goals in their digital or physical environments. Using AI practices and techniques such as large language models (LLMs), organizations are creating and deploying AI agents to achieve complex tasks. “To reap the benefits of AI agents, organisations need to determine the most relevant business contexts and use cases, which is challenging given no AI agent is the same and every situation is different,” says Khandabattu. “Although AI agents will continue to become more powerful, they can’t be used in every case, so use will largely depend on the requirements of the situation at hand.” AI-ready data ensures datasets are optimized for AI applications, enhancing accuracy and efficiency. Readiness is determined through the data’s ability to prove its fitness for use for specific AI use cases. It can only be determined contextually to the AI use case and the AI technique used, which forces new approaches to data management. According to Gartner, organizations that invest in AI at scale need to evolve their data management practices and capabilities to extend them to AI. This will cater to existing and upcoming business demands, ensure trust, avoid risk and compliance issues, preserve intellectual property, and reduce bias and hallucinations. Multimodal AI models are trained with multiple types of data simultaneously, such as images, video, audio, and text. By integrating and analyzing diverse data sources, they can better understand complex situations than models that use only one type of data. This helps users make sense of the world and opens up new avenues for AI applications. Multimodal AI will become increasingly integral to capability advancement in every application and software product across all industries over the next five years, says Gartner. AI TRiSM plays a crucial role in ensuring ethical and secure AI deployment. It comprises four layers of technical capabilities that support enterprise policies for all AI use cases and help assure AI governance, trustworthiness, fairness, safety, reliability, security, privacy, and data protection. “AI brings new trust, risk and security management challenges that conventional controls don’t address,” says Khandabattu. “Organizations must evaluate and implement layered AI TRiSM technology to continuously support and enforce policies across all AI entities in use.”

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Understanding Gartner's Hype Cycle for AI

Q: What is the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI? A: The Gartner Hype Cycle for AI is an annual report that visually represents the maturity, adoption, and business application of various AI technologies. It maps technologies through five phases: Innovation Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity. Q: Which technologies are at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the 2025 Gartner Hype Cycle for AI? A: According to the report, AI agents and AI-ready data are currently at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, indicating high levels of hype and potential, but also significant challenges to overcome for widespread adoption. Q: What is the significance of AI agents being at the Peak of Inflated Expectations? A: It signifies that AI agents are generating considerable excitement and investment, with organizations exploring their potential for operational scalability and real-time intelligence. However, achieving their full potential requires careful alignment with business needs and robust implementation strategies. Q: What is "AI-ready data"? A: AI-ready data refers to datasets that are optimized and prepared for use in AI applications. This involves ensuring data quality, relevance, and suitability for specific AI use cases to enhance accuracy and efficiency. Q: Why is multimodal AI considered to be at the Peak of Inflated Expectations? A: Multimodal AI, which processes multiple types of data simultaneously (like text, images, and audio), is at this peak because of its significant potential to understand complex situations better than single-data-type models, opening up new application avenues. Q: What is AI TRiSM? A: AI TRiSM stands for AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management. It's a framework encompassing technical capabilities designed to ensure ethical, secure, and trustworthy AI deployments by addressing governance, fairness, safety, reliability, and data protection. Q: What is the overall sentiment regarding AI investment according to the article? A: The article indicates that AI investment remains strong, with a growing emphasis on using AI for operational scalability and real-time intelligence, shifting focus towards foundational AI enablers like AI agents. Q: What does Gartner suggest for organizations to achieve success with AI technologies? A: Gartner emphasizes the need for tightly business-aligned pilots, proactive infrastructure benchmarking, and strong coordination between AI and business teams to realize tangible business value from AI.

Crypto Market AI's Take

The Gartner Hype Cycle report highlights a crucial evolution in the AI landscape, with a clear emphasis shifting towards the foundational enablers of AI that drive practical business outcomes. At Crypto Market AI, we recognize this trend and are committed to providing advanced tools that leverage these emerging technologies. Our platform integrates sophisticated AI agents to assist in market analysis, automate trading strategies, and deliver personalized insights for cryptocurrency investors. We understand the importance of AI-ready data and continuously refine our data processing capabilities to ensure accuracy and reduce bias in our predictive models. For those looking to harness the power of AI in their crypto endeavors, exploring how AI agents can optimize portfolios and identify market opportunities is key. Our commitment is to build secure and reliable AI-driven financial solutions, aligning with the growing demand for intelligent and scalable AI applications in the finance sector.

More to Read:

• How AI Agents Are Revolutionizing Cryptocurrency Trading
• The Future of AI in Financial Markets: Trends and Predictions
• Understanding Multimodal AI: A Deep Dive into its Capabilities

Originally published at Electronics Weekly on 7th August 2025.