Gartner projects 40% of enterprise applications will embed AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% in 2025. An eightfold jump in one year. No previous enterprise technology cycle has compressed that fast.
The plumbing tells the same story. MCP crossed 97 million monthly SDK downloads. A2A gathered over 100 enterprise supporters in three months. Protocols are hardening before most organizations have finished their pilots.
And most haven't. Deloitte's survey of senior leaders shows 30% exploring, 38% piloting, just 11% in production. The infrastructure is becoming assumed while the adopters are still experimenting. The window between "exciting new capability" and "boring background layer" may be closing before the people making deployment decisions realize it opened.