Enterprises Embrace AI Agents As Infrastructure

At The Wall Street Journal’s Technology Council Summit this year, chief technology officers said enterprises have rapidly adopted AI agents across customer service, finance, and software development. Companies including Principal Financial Group, BNY Mellon—with 130 AI "digital employees"—Sonic Automotive and Intuit described deployments and agent-first coding workflows. Executives warned these agent rollouts raise cybersecurity, authentication, governance and workforce risks that require new identity and oversight frameworks.