A CB Insights analysis of AI agent return on investment found that enterprises are deploying agents faster than they can measure them. In the firm's fourth-quarter 2025 survey of 59 executives, 80% said AI agent adoption is a priority, while 40% said they cannot track or do not know their ROI. Among those who track agent KPIs, revenue impact measurement lagged at 25%, as efficiency metrics remained the default.

The accompanying chart ranks the top generative AI markets by equity deal count over the last three months as of January 2026. AI agent observability, evaluation and governance led with 25 deals. Customer service AI agents and copilots followed with 24, legal AI agents and copilots recorded 22, and coding AI agents and copilots and generative AI photo and video tools each recorded 20.

CB Insights ranked observability and evaluation first by deal count among the 91 markets it tracks. The market includes more than 75 companies, and Y Combinator has backed 30% of them. Snyk acquired Invariant Labs and Coralogix acquired Aporia, which CB Insights read as security and observability vendors treating agent monitoring as a core capability.

The analysis identified two further emerging areas. Memory management for persistent enterprise context is a 19-company market in which 84% of vendors were founded since 2022. AI cost management software is beginning to link agent activity to business outcomes.

CB Insights scored these markets using its Mosaic measure of private company health, which is rated out of 1,000, and its Commercial Maturity scale, which runs to 5.

Source: CB Insights Research - https://www.cbinsights.com/research/ai-agent-roi-markets/