A new IDC report lands with a finding most technology leaders are not prepared for: 46% of enterprise technology buyers now use AI as their most frequently consulted source during vendor evaluation. The vendor salesperson trails at 33%.
That number is not a signal. It is a diagnosis.
The report, produced using IDC Quanta and backed by IDC’s 60+ years of proprietary research, documents three structural shifts in how enterprise technology markets now work. The gap between organizations that have adapted and those still running 2023 playbooks is widening fast.
Finding 1: The Buying Journey Has Already Been Restructured
Buyers are not experimenting with AI during evaluation. They are using it as a primary tool, right now.
- 68% use AI always or often to compare products and solution features across vendors
- 70% use it always or often to research industry and technology trends
- 62% use it always or often to get advice on how to solve a business problem
- 54% use AI always or often for RFI/RFP and configuration tasks
- 68% use it to gain deeper technical understanding of how products and services work
The forward-looking numbers are sharper:
- 86% say they will use AI to streamline and accelerate internal buying decisions
- 80% will use AI agents to proactively engage vendors and reduce salesperson reliance
- 74% plan to delegate buying tasks to AI agents operating under set parameters
IDC projects that by 2028, 70% of enterprise application buyers will use AI agents for pricing and contracting. By 2029, 42% of B2B buying journeys will be executed by AI agents autonomously.
These are deadlines, not trends to monitor.
The segment data is worth noting. Midmarket buyers are furthest ahead, using AI-led exploration, evaluation, and RFI/RFP consolidation. Large enterprises are using AI for productivity and process speed while remaining more conservative on full autonomy. Small businesses are leaning into AI-assisted vendor comparisons and information synthesis.
If your go-to-market strategy was built around a buyer who first encounters your positioning from a salesperson, that buyer is gone.
Finding 2: The Credibility Gap Is Now a Structural Risk
AI has made it easier to generate content and harder to earn trust with it.
IDC’s 2026 Marketing Barometer documents rising buyer fatigue with AI content and falling trust in vendor material. Buyers are applying more scrutiny, not less. Industry experts and analysts now sit at 45% as an evaluation source, statistically tied with AI tools at 46%, while vendor websites have dropped from 66% to 37%.
The sourcing hierarchy is clear:
- AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, others): 46% — now ahead of the vendor salesperson
- Industry experts and analysts: 45% — analyst reviews cited by 33% as most helpful for final decisions
- Vendor websites: 37% — most accessed, least trusted; buyers treat vendor-published content as marketing
The governance dimension compounds this. IDC research shows 90% of enterprise legal buyers are writing AI clauses into their guidelines, creating formal triggers to challenge unsupported vendor claims. Undisclosed AI-generated content can stall or derail deals at the procurement and legal review stage.
The organizations pulling ahead are not publishing more content. They are publishing content that holds up when an AI tool or a procurement officer tries to verify it.
Finding 3: AI Maturity Is Not Keeping Pace With AI Adoption
Only 3.1% of organizations have reached the Optimized AI maturity stage, according to IDC’s MaturityScape Benchmark. That is up from 0.4% a year ago, roughly an 8x increase, but the base is still almost nothing. The broad middle of the market has barely moved.
The regional split matters for enterprise sales teams. North America’s Optimized-stage share is 4.9%, roughly double the worldwide average. EMEA and APAC both sit under 3%.
Where AI maturity actually stands across GTM functions:
Sales enablement is furthest into production. Over half of early adopters report live use in lead scoring, proposal generation, and coaching. Human approval remains the norm; scale is constrained.
Strategic decision-making is early-stage for most enterprises. The constraint is not tool access. Governance and senior-leader oversight of AI outputs are prerequisites to scale, and most organizations have not built those structures.
Marketing and GTM has the widest gaps. Data readiness, governance, and change management all lag tool adoption. Competitive and market intelligence functions sit inside this cohort.
The IDC finding is precise: it is not the organizations that bought the most tools that are pulling ahead. It is the organizations that closed the gap between tool adoption and governance readiness.
What the Market Concentration Data Says
The core AI software market reached $42.8 billion in 2025H2, up 103% year-over-year from $21.0 billion in 2024H2. Market share is concentrating rapidly. The top five vendors now account for 62.2% of the market, up from 48% twelve months prior.
The Practical Implication
The IDC report frames the core problem precisely: most technology companies are still competing with intelligence infrastructure built for a different market. Manual research cycles. Portal-based sourcing. Unsourced competitive claims.
The companies moving ahead are not running larger teams. They have restructured how intelligence reaches the people who need it, how fast it moves from market signal to decision, and how well it holds up when scrutinized by a buyer who is now better informed than ever.
The gap is structural. It is not closed by buying another tool.
Source: IDC Quanta Insights Report 2026: The AI Inflection Point. All statistics cited directly from IDC proprietary research.
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