As the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots levels off, supply chain management (SCM) software with agentic AI capabilities will grow from less than $2 billion in 2025 to $53 billion in spend by 2030, according to a report from Gartner Inc.

The initial wave of AI-assistant SCM software has already had a substantial impact on the SCM market, the report says. And it is now entering a new phase in which providers are seeking competitive advantage through investments in AI agents to execute simple tasks either individually or in collaboration with other agents.

“Simple AI agents are capable of executing discrete supply chain tasks, increasingly enabling organizations to automate routine workflows and freeing up bandwidth of humans to complete more complex tasks,” said Balaji Abbabatulla, VP Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice. “As supply chain organizations begin to realize, measure and demonstrate business value from such simple AI agents over the next 12 to 18 months, leaders in these organizations will start prioritizing investments in clusters of simple AI agents to enable orchestration of multi-step workflows with or without humans in the loop.”

Gartner predicts that by 2030, 60% of enterprises using SCM software will have adopted agentic AI features, up from just 5% in 2025, as businesses move from planning to deploying agentic AI within supply chain workflows.

However, enterprise deployments of AI-driven SCM will lag behind general availability of such capabilities from SCM software providers due to the increasing gap between the technology and other layers of the supply chain operating model. Therefore, as chief supply chain officers and supply chain technology leaders evaluate and plan for the adoption of agentic AI capabilities, it is essential for them to determine and deploy appropriate levels of human-in-the-loop for supply chain management decisions, particularly during the early stages of AI-driven SCM software deployment.

“Leaders should focus their change management investments in adjacent layers of the supply chain operating model—such as data management, operations management, workforce AI-readiness, and network-centricity,” Abbabatulla said. “Additionally, developing strategic partnerships with AI-driven SCM platform providers is crucial to ensure robust support for multi-agent, multi-vendor AI agent orchestration.”

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