The Rise of the Agentic Workforce

Artificial intelligence has arrived in the workplace and has the potential to be as transformative as the steam engine was to the 19th-century Industrial Revolution.

Key findings

• Agentic AI startups raised $2.8B in 2025 through May, 1.7% of all venture capital invested.
• Lovable reached $100M ARR eight months after passing $1M, faster than Cursor, Wiz, OpenAI, Slack, Twilio and Shopify.
• Agentic AI took 3.2% of Europe's total VC funding in 2025, twice its 1.6% share in the US.
• Vertical applications took 71% of agentic AI funding in 2024-2025, up from 25% in 2018-2019.
• Software engineering hires at top US AI companies peaked above 3,000 a month in mid-2020, went net negative from mid-2023 to mid-2024 and were near zero by late 2024.