If 2024 was the year enterprises experimented with generative AI, 2025 was the year they put it to work. Pilots became deployments. Ideas became workflows. And perhaps most significantly, the conversation around AI shifted from "What can it do?" to "What can it do on its own?"
But the technical breakthroughs are only one part of the story. This was also the year enterprises grappled with issues such as governance, trust, and the evolving role of human workers in a future of autonomous AI agents. The questions people asked got harder, the stakes got higher, and the gap between AI leaders and laggards grew wider.
As 2025 draws to a close, we asked leaders from across ServiceNow to reflect on the moments, shifts, and surprises that defined the year—and what they signal for the year ahead.
This year saw the rise of agentic AI, a form of artificial intelligence that can reason, plan, and execute multistep tasks with minimal human intervention. Across industries, organizations reimagined workflows as opportunities for AI to act as a genuine collaborator: triaging service requests, orchestrating complex approvals, and even resolving issues before anyone files a ticket.
C-suite leaders discovered that AI transformation requires fundamental changes in how they approach their workforces. The challenge went beyond technology implementation. It demanded reimagining how people work, learn, and grow alongside AI systems. Organizational charts shifted as HR leaders took on dual responsibilities spanning talent management and technology enablement.
This year's winning organizations focused on building employee confidence through systematic skill development, says Jacqui Canney, chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow. They pursued three critical initiatives: restructuring HR departments to support AI adoption, rolling out organization-wide AI training programs with immediate impact, and fundamentally rethinking workforce composition and capabilities.
In 2025, CIOs became architects of AI transformation, embracing the role of changemaker to move their enterprises from AI pilots to AI value, says Kellie Romack, chief digital information officer at ServiceNow. These IT leaders aligned operations with overall business goals and broke down silos that hindered transformation by focusing on three key areas:
- Shifting priorities and embracing new roles: CIOs formed strategic partnerships with their C-suite peers, actively helped entire organizations develop AI skills, and became cultural change agents.
- Building hybrid IT centers: IT departments evolved to not only save costs but also drive revenue by developing new products, services, and business models.
- Prioritizing experience: IT teams built trust by delivering positive employee experiences that advanced AI transformation. Successful CIOs encouraged their teams to adopt a product mindset and inclusive design thinking, bringing everyone along on the journey.
Looking back, 2025 was the year agentic AI began moving from promise to reality. This transformation was powered by courageous culture, context-rich integration, AI-augmented development, and governance that accelerates innovation. As we head into 2026, the mandate is clear: Prioritize governance, put AI to work where decisions and actions happen, and keep building the people-first skills that organizations need to succeed.
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