CIOs Take On Lifecycle Management as Employees Build Thousands of AI Agents

Enterprises are deploying AI agents at growing scale: Gartner expects Fortune 500 companies to average over 150,000 agents by 2028, and Microsoft reports more than 500,000 internal agents. As employee-built agents spread, CIOs are responsible for moving them from development to production, tracking them against KPIs, and retiring them when they stop meeting business needs. Fujifilm Biotechnologies' contract-review agent, set to go live in December, illustrates the pattern.

Why it matters: IT leaders who govern shadow-built agents need lifecycle, KPI, and decommissioning processes that resemble service management practices, and this article frames that shift.