Welcome executives and professionals. C-suite leaders who start with a clear agentic AI strategy, leading with value and powered by the right enabling capabilities, will wire their enterprise to win.

Since the previous edition, we have reviewed hundreds of the latest insights in agentic and generative AI, spanning best practices, case studies, market dynamics, and innovations.

This briefing outlines what is driving material value — and why it’s important.

In today’s briefing:

• Accenture's "one-two punch” strategy.

• IBM: The AI multiplier effect.

• 2025 U.S. State AI Legislation Report.

• The enterprise AI engineering playbook.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

EXECUTIVE INSIGHT

Accenture's "one-two punch” agentic AI strategy

Brief: Accenture Strategy released a 27-page report for executive leaders on maximizing ROI from agentic AI, outlining its economic shift and detailing how its “one-two punch” provides a path for enterprises to scale impact.

Breakdown:

• AI agents let one human match the output of many through augmentation, while substitution enables full automation of certain tasks.

• These "agentic workforces" unlock advantages externally through new business models and internally through gains in efficiency and speed.

• Winners will deploy agentic AI where it delivers 10x value, not 10% savings, starting with an enterprise portfolio of opportunities.

• Accenture’s one-two punch (image above): value targeting plus enabling capabilities, helps early adopters avoid pilot purgatory.

• Case studies show the strategy in practice, including value targeting at a chemicals company and Accenture’s enabling capabilities.

Why it’s important: By 2030, the winners will be those that fully embrace "agentic workforces." The next step is the "agentic enterprise," where advances in physical AI, machines embedded with multi-agent systems, strengthen the digital agent–human dynamic and create a unified operating model.

ENTERPRISE DATA

IBM: The AI multiplier effect

Brief: IBM, in partnership with Oxford Economics, released its 2025 Chief Data Officer Study, a 44-page report surveying 1,700 enterprise data leaders to outline best practices for organizations aiming to lead in AI.

Breakdown:

• 83% of CDOs say AI agents deliver potential benefits that outweigh risks, and 77% report confidence in relying on agent outcomes.

• Enterprise AI at scale hinges on connected data, yet many firms face fragmented taxonomies, inconsistent standards and no E2E visibility.

• Data silos slow AI progress, forcing teams into long cleanup cycles where they spend more time fixing quality issues than producing insights.

• The research identifies five best practice areas: strategy, scale, resilience, innovation, and growth, supported by fifteen core actions.

• With properly integrated data architecture, AI agents can go beyond isolated pilots to deliver cross-functional use cases that scale.

Why it’s important: CDOs once focused on data reliability and compliance, but quality alone is no longer enough. Impact now depends on quality at scale, knowing which AI use cases matter most, what data powers them, and enabling that data to be reused repeatedly to drive outcomes.

AI POLICY

2025 U.S. State AI Legislation Report

Brief: The Transparency Coalition published a 2025 overview of AI-related bills, identifying 73 new laws across 27 states, amid the continuing policy debate over how AI should be regulated in the U.S.

Breakdown:

• States most often targeted deepfake harms, child safety in chatbot interactions, and clear disclosure when AI systems are used.

• Many states updated fraud, harassment, bullying, and image-abuse statutes to address AI deepfakes, with some adding misdemeanors.

• Reports of harmful interactions between children and chatbots led states to require disclosure statements and built-in safety protocols.

• California bars chatbots from exposing minors to sexual content, requires AI disclosure, and mandates suicide-prevention measures.

• A 10-year Congressional moratorium on state AI laws failed, leaving states free to act, though reattempts for unified federal regulation are expected.

Why it’s important: The report shows states moving quickly to curb AI harms, but federal leaders warn that without a unified framework, inconsistent requirements could slow adoption, weaken competitiveness, and ultimately impact U.S. influence on global rules, norms and power.

AI-NATIVE INSIGHT

The enterprise AI engineering playbook

Brief: Augment Code, a Palo Alto AI company, released a 27-page AI engineering playbook outlining a four-phase framework with checklists and case studies to help enterprises assess maturity and accelerate transformation.

Breakdown:

• Leading engineering teams are realizing gains in delivery speed, onboarding efficiency, and reduced technical debt across the SDLC.

• Phase 1 (2-3 months) builds momentum by empowering AI champions, tracking developer sentiment and adoption, and driving early wins.

• Phase 2 (3-6 months) scales practices across teams, leaders start to cite productivity gains, and AI tackles deeper enterprise complexity.

• Phase 3 (9-12 months) delivers full-SDLC integration, embedding context-aware AI from planning and requirements to deployment and monitoring.

• Phase 4 leaders move beyond commodity tools, building custom AI capabilities with AI infra becoming as differentiated as their core products.

Why it’s important: AI-augmented engineering is still in its infancy, and only a few organizations have mastered productivity gains and integration. Most remain in Phase 2 or 3, leaving Phase 4 open for leaders building differentiated AI capabilities to define the future of enterprise engineering.

AWS published its 22-page blueprint for AI transformation spanning five chapters and perspectives Capgemini, IBM, and PwC executives.

BCG released a 28-slide executive playbook for AI-first retail leaders, and insights on investing in people to unlock the value of AI.

Microsoft commissioned IDC to survey 4,000+ AI leaders, finding frontier firms achieve three times higher returns in AI adoption.

Capgemini released 32 pages on architecting AI agents in the public sector and 48 slides on cloud and AI agents in financial services.

KPMG published insights on AI enabling positive climate outcomes (45 pages), generative AI’s economic impact (37 slides), and executive due diligence.

McKinsey shared guidance on unlocking the value of clean, trusted data, detailing common pitfalls, and their AI4Data accelerator.

IMD released its 2025 AI Maturity Index and a paper on "AI strategies that are working," across 10 industries including healthcare and consumer goods.

Capgemini’s 10th Conversations for Tomorrow includes CXO insights on agentic AI, nuclear energy, robotics, and more, featuring Microsoft’s CTO.

OpenAI released GPT-5.1 with a more conversational tone, new personality presets, faster reasoning; and launched a cost-efficient GPT-5-Codex-Mini.

Google enhanced Vertex AI Agent Builder, including new context management, single command deployment, observability and evaluation features.

Anthropic thwarted the "first AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign,” after attackers used Claude Code to autonomously execute most of it.

Cursor raised $2.3B at a $29.3B valuation, nearly tripling since June, marking its third round this year following its in-house model and 2.0 platform debut.

Google announced Deep Research in NotebookLM, alongside new support for Google Sheets, images, Word documents, and PDFs from Google Drive.

ByteDance’s Volcano Engine introduced Doubao-Seed-Code, a coding model matching Claude Sonnet on benchmarks while offering a lower price.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said the U.S. “must run harder, run faster” on AI, warning that the West "will have far fewer rights if America’s not in the lead.”

SoftBank exited its full $5.8B Nvidia stake to fund AI infra investments with OpenAI, as CEO Masayoshi Son reaffirmed an “all-in” AI strategy.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Johnson & Johnson - Head of AI

DuPont - Emerging Technology Leader

AWS - Director of AI Innovation

EVENTS

Anthropic - AI Agents at Netflix - November 20, 2025

Institute for AI Transformation - AI Leaders Summit - December 9-10, 2025

The AI Summit New York - December 10-11, 2025

Originally conceived as a practical communication for executives the editor, Lewis Walker, has worked with, this briefing now serves as a trusted resource for thousands of senior decision-makers shaping the future of enterprise AI.

If your AI product or service adds value to this audience, contact us for information on a limited number of sponsorship opportunities.

We also welcome feedback as we continue to refine the briefing.