Forget the boardroom. According to a new report from Moveworks, the enterprise agentic AI assistant platform, the real AI revolution is coming from the ground up. In “The New Face of AI Leadership,” the company reveals that non-technical employees — not IT leaders or C-suite executives — are the ones driving the most impactful AI initiatives across large enterprises.
The study, conducted in partnership with Wakefield Research, surveyed 200 U.S. IT executives from companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. The results paint a clear picture: AI is no longer a top-down directive—it’s a grassroots transformation, reshaping how organizations function, how employees grow, and how business value is measured.
“Viewing agentic AI as just another IT project misses the seismic shift happening across the enterprise,” said Bhavin Shah, CEO and Co-founder of Moveworks. “The future of work won’t be built by those who bring in the most tools, but by those who eliminate friction and empower employees to work efficiently and easily.”
Frontline Innovation and the Rise of “Agentic AI”
Among the report’s most striking findings:
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91% of IT executives say non-technical employees are driving AI initiatives more than in any previous tech wave.
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78% say the most successful AI projects began with frontline or support staff solving persistent business challenges.
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68% of enterprises have already created new roles for managing agentic AI; another 31% say they should.
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96% of executives prioritize useful AI tools over the latest large language models, reflecting a shift from hype to outcomes.
In essence, AI’s most profound impact isn’t in code—it’s in workflow redesign, process reinvention, and employee empowerment. The trend toward agentic AI—systems capable of autonomous reasoning and problem-solving—signals that workers across departments are using intelligent agents to solve everyday pain points once bogged down by bureaucracy or inefficiency.
Cultural Disruption: Enterprises Are Unprepared
The democratization of AI comes with cultural consequences. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of executives admit their organizations are unprepared for the disruption that agentic AI brings. This includes not only retraining staff but also redefining accountability, collaboration, and even leadership.
The report highlights an emerging “AI readiness gap”—where employees are experimenting and implementing, while management is still strategizing. As one executive noted anonymously in the study, “By the time IT approves an AI pilot, our customer service reps have already built a chatbot that’s improving response times.”
This shift mirrors what we’ve seen in past technology revolutions—think of how mobile devices or cloud tools initially entered the enterprise through employees rather than CIO mandates. The difference now? Agentic AI can redesign work itself, changing not only what gets done, but how.
Measuring AI’s True ROI: Beyond Speed and Efficiency
Moveworks’ findings suggest the metrics for AI success are evolving. Instead of just tracking time savings, companies are measuring AI’s contribution to output (57%), process reinvention (53%), and the creation of new capabilities (47%). This shift moves the conversation from “automation” to “augmentation”—from doing things faster to doing entirely new things.
That mindset aligns with what Moveworks itself delivers: an enterprise-grade AI assistant that automates repetitive tasks and helps employees across functions—from HR to IT to finance—work more effectively. The company, already recognized as one of Fast Company’s 2025 Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise and a Forbes Cloud 100 standout, is helping enterprises see AI less as a project and more as a partner.
The Bottom Line
The Moveworks report makes one thing clear: AI leadership is shifting from executives to employees. The most transformative innovations are happening where problems are felt most acutely—on the front lines.
Enterprises that succeed in this new landscape won’t just deploy more AI; they’ll trust and empower employees to lead its adoption. Those who cling to traditional hierarchies risk being left behind in a workplace increasingly defined by agility, experimentation, and human-machine collaboration.
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Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Public relations, investor relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire for secure and accurate distribution of market-moving news and multimedia. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX network. Business Wire’s global newsrooms are available to meet the needs of communications professionals and news media worldwide.
