IDC: 62% of enterprises rely on expiring credits for over a quarter of AI agent budgets
perilli · x · 2026-10-26
Perilli of IDC's Sourcing Advisory team reports frontier AI labs are offering phenomenal discounts to enterprise clients on seats and API access, and a substantial share of AI agent budgets goes to services covered by promotional credits or introductory rates.
IDC's FERS Survey Wave 5 (Sept 2026, N=1,686) breaks down the share of AI agent budgets relying on expiring credits: only 2% of enterprises at 0%; 33% at 1–25%; 43% at 26–50%; 19% at 51–75%; 3% at 76–100% — meaning 62% run over a quarter of their budgets on discounted pricing.
When those credits and introductory rates expire next year, organizations worldwide will have to re-evaluate whether their AI initiatives still justify full price — a second business-case test for enterprise AI.
Related event: IDC: Many Enterprise AI Agent Budgets Ride on Expiring Vendor Discounts(3 posts)→
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