The 10 Biggest News Stories Of 2025 (So Far)

This year’s leading news stories (so far) include the wave of agentic AI technology development, tariffs and economic uncertainty, the mixed fortunes of Nvidia and Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s completed $13.4 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.

For the IT industry and the channel, 2025 (so far) has been marked by economic uncertainty. Much of that has been driven by the Trump administration’s ever-changing tariff plans, which have kept IT industry executives constantly guessing about the impact on the economy and their businesses.

All this, nevertheless, has failed to distract IT vendors from their frenzy of agentic AI development in 2025, the current focus of the broader AI wave that began sweeping through the IT industry in early 2023.

Other top stories for this year include several mega-mergers including Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s completed $13.4 billion purchase of Juniper Networks and Google’s deal to buy cloud security darling Wiz for $32 billion, significant layoffs at some of the industry’s biggest companies, and a ransomware attack against a leading distributor.

Here’s our look at the top 10 news stories of 2025 (so far), starting with No. 10 and counting down to No. 1. Take a look and see if you agree with our choices.

No. 10: The Changing Of The Guard At Kaseya

The new year started off with a shock when Fred Voccola, the hard-charging Kaseya CEO who built the company into the dominant MSP platform, unexpectedly stepped down after more than 10 years leading the company to more than $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue. The company has also been making plans for an initial public offering.

“With Kaseya coming off the strongest quarter and year in our history, now is the right time for me to step up into the role of vice chairman and hand over operating responsibilities to a new CEO,” Voccola said in a statement.

Kaseya partners expressed surprise at the news and called the change in leadership at the company a potential “sea change” for MSPs given the amount of growth they realized working with Miami-based Kaseya under Voccola’s management. But some partners also said his departure could open the door to building a better future for the company and its partners.

In June, Kaseya announced that it had hired Rania Succar, a former Google and Intuit executive, as its new CEO. Succar brought to the CEO post more than a decade of experience building innovative technology solutions for small businesses. In an interview with CRN, she outlined a bold vision for Kaseya’s future anchored on accelerating innovation, enhancing customer experience and strengthening company culture.

“I have spent the last nine years building innovative technology solutions for small businesses to fuel their success,” she told CRN. “Kaseya is incredibly well-positioned to play a big role in small business success, given our deep partnership with MSPs. These providers are trusted advisors to small businesses and we’re here to supercharge their impact.”

Kaseya has made other changes and additions to its executive ranks including naming SaaS Alerts co-founder Jim Lippie as the company’s new chief product officer in April.

Just last week Kaseya named Anthony Anzevino, a Commvault, Veeam Software and Amazon Web Services veteran, as the company’s new chief revenue officer and Pratik Wadher, previously with Intuit, Applatix and Data Domain, as chief technology officer. With the appointments, Succar is putting her stamp on the company as she looks to accelerate innovation while reinforcing the company’s commitment to keeping MSPs at the core of its vision.

All these leadership changes come as Kaseya faces increased competition from ConnectWise, N-able and other MSP platform upstarts.

No. 9: The IT Industry Tangles With Tariff Uncertainties

Through 2025 (so far) the IT industry and the channel have had to navigate a treacherous minefield of the Trump administration’s ever-changing tariff policies that impact international trade.

The administration’s tariffs and retaliatory tariffs implemented by some countries have created confusion for the IT industry and raised concerns about their impact on channel growth.

Many IT companies rely heavily on components and systems manufactured outside of the U.S., and many sell their products overseas. Research from IPED, the channel consulting arm of CRN parent The Channel Company, found that in the earliest days of the global tariff war, some solution providers were already seeing vendor price increases and longer sales cycles.

“It’s a very fast-moving, volatile, unstable environment where today the situation might be clear and tomorrow it might be different than what it is today,” said Mark Bakker, Hewlett Packard Enterprise executive president and general manager of operations, in an interview with CRN in April. “I think we are in a situation of continued uncertainty and volatility, which makes it hard for anybody in the supply chain to make any decisions about what to move, where and how quickly.”

The impact of tariffs, so far, has been spotty. Early on, distributors were grappling with the possible impact of tariffs. In March distributor Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions said it had begun raising prices due to rising costs from tariffs against products imported from China, Canada and Mexico.

And in August, Mike Bauer, CEO of distributor ScanSource, told CRN that customers appeared to be accelerating orders in the company’s fiscal 2025 fourth quarter (ended June 30) in response to tariff-driven uncertainty, potentially impacting sales in the current quarter.

In April, Pure Storage blamed tariffs for its plan to reduce special pricing discounts that could increase hardware prices by 10 percent. Other companies, including PC maker Acer, vowed to try to avoid passing tariff costs along to customers for as long as possible.

No. 8: Rodney Clark Steps Down As Cisco Channel Chief

On August 18, partners in Cisco’s universe were surprised when the tech giant announced that Rodney Clark (pictured), the company’s global channel chief for less than two years, was stepping down. Tim Coogan, previously senior vice president of Cisco’s U.S. commercial business, was named senior vice president of Cisco’s Global Partner Sales organization—effective immediately.

No reason for the management change was given. Clark is staying on as a strategic advisor through the end of the year.

Cisco partners applauded the appointment of Coogan, a 25-year Cisco veteran, to the global channel chief role and said the move had them energized about the future of Cisco’s channel strategy.

“Tim gets it,” Manak Ahluwalia, CEO of Aqueduct Technologies, a Canton, Mass.-based Cisco Gold partner, told CRN. “He understands where the partner provides value, the sales landscape, what it means to get down on the street. He has heard partners talk about profitability and operational challenges. He gets Cisco. That’s a great choice.”

The executive change came about six weeks after Cisco rival HPE completed its acquisition of Juniper, another rival, in a move aimed at reshaping the networking landscape.

Cisco is also in the process of rolling out a major revamp of its partner program called Cisco 360. The program, designed under Clark’s direction, is scheduled to be fully live in February 2026 and at the time of Clark’s departure a Cisco spokesperson said that Cisco 360 was “moving forward as planned.”

Cisco 360 makes some significant changes in how the company works with its partners, including rewarding partners more for the value they provide rather than on sales transactions. That’s a significant break from the previous program that made the biggest payouts to partners landing large, capex infrastructure deals.

The new partner program is causing anxiety among some Cisco partners, especially those who have had strong past years with the tech giant, solution providers told CRN in June.

In July, Cisco provided more details about Cisco 360’s all-important partner incentives and profitability metrics, including the Value Index, partner designations and the Cisco Partner Incentive Estimators.

No. 7: Nvidia Hits Market Cap Of $4 Trillion; Intel Continues To Struggle

AI infrastructure provider and chip designer Nvidia has continued to flourish in 2025 despite hurdles such as moves by the Trump Administration to restrict its sales in China (resulting in a multibillion-dollar write-off against first-quarter earnings). It even briefly became the most valuable company in the world when its market capitalization hit $4 trillion in July. The company achieved the benchmark on July 9 when the company’s share price grew 2.8 percent to $164.42.

Huge demand for its Blackwell GPUs has been driving Nvidia’s success, and in August CEO Jensen Huang said that he sees “significant growth opportunities ahead” that could allow Nvidia to seize a large part of an AI infrastructure market it forecasts to reach up to $4 trillion by the end of the decade.

The Nvidia founder made the comments after the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported second-quarter revenue of $46.7 billion, up 56 percent from the same period one year earlier.

In January Nvidia unveiled a mini desktop PC powered by a smaller version of its Grace Blackwell Superchip, indicating a possible bigger expansion by the company into the system-on-a-chip market for personal computers. And in March Nvidia revealed details of Blackwell Ultra, the follow-up to the Blackwell GPUs.

In a surprise twist, Nvidia on September 18 unveiled plans to invest $5 billion in Intel common stock and jointly develop “multiple generations” of products with the rival chipmaker.

The deal could prove to be a lifeline for Intel, whose struggles to regain the momentum that once made it one of the IT industry’s most powerful companies have continued in 2025 with flat revenue and net losses, widespread layoffs, executive turnover, discontinued products—and even conflict with the Trump Administration.

In July as part of its second quarter financial results it disclosed plans to end 2025 with about 75,000 employees—down about 24,500 workers from the roughly 99,500 employees it had at the end of 2024.

Charged with the task of turning the chip maker around is Lip-Bu Tan who was named CEO on March 12. He took over from interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus who had run the company since then-CEO Pat Gelsinger suddenly stepped down in December.

In January Intel said it was canceling its next-generation Falcon Shores AI accelerator chip, focusing instead on developing a system-level solution at rack scale with a successor chip called Jaguar Shores. The company also took steps to shed some businesses, including its Network and Edge Group business unit, and spin off its RealSense computer vision business.

In February Intel, citing both market conditions and the need to manage its own financial capital, said it was slowing construction of its $28 billion semiconductor factory project in Ohio. In April the company announced a plan to reduce its operating expenses by $500 million this year and another $1 billion in 2026.

The company has also lost key personnel. Justin Hotard, head of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group, left in February, a few months after shakeups to the company’s leadership team and a re-evaluation of its AI chip strategy. In April, departing executives included Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell—whose oversight of Intel’s Sales and Marketing Group included the company’s global partner organization—and Chief People Officer Christy Pambianchi. In May, Uday Yadati and Cameron Chehreh, data center and public sector sales leaders, respectively, left the company.

To its credit Intel, amid all the turmoil, has continued to support its channel partner base. In January Dave Guzzi, named Intel’s new channel chief in October 2024, said the company was boosting funding for partner investment and incentives. That was followed in August with news that Intel would boost partner incentives as part of a plan to launch a simplified Intel Partner Alliance program this coming October.

Nvidia and Intel have both found themselves entangled in disputes with the White House in 2025.

In early August U.S. President Donald Trump called for Tan to resign “immediately.” But the dustup cooled after Tan met with Trump on Aug.11 and on Aug. 22 Trump said Intel would sell the U.S. government a 10 percent stake in the chipmaker.

Huang met with Trump in July over the issue of sales of advanced chips to China and in August Nvidia (along with AMD) struck deals under which the chip companies can export certain AI chips to China and will share 15 percent of the revenue from those sales with the U.S. government.

No. 6: Ingram Micro Hit By SafePay Attack As Industry Continues To Grapple With Ransomware

Ransomware attacks have been a growing threat for businesses and organizations of all types. But the danger was really brought home to the IT industry and the channel in July when distributor Ingram Micro was attacked, halting its ability to process orders and ship products.

The distribution giant was hit with the SafePay ransomware attack on July 3, taking down its web site and online ordering systems, including Ingram’s AI-powered Xvantage platform and the Impulse license provisioning system.

“This is our worst nightmare come true,” said the CEO of one CRN Solution Provider 500 company at the time. “If we can’t place orders or get quotes, it stops our business. We are extremely concerned that this could last for some time.”

On July 5 Ingram Micro confirmed that it had been hit by a ransomware attack and that it was “working diligently to restore the affected systems” so that it could process and ship orders.” The distributor also said it had notified law enforcement authorities about the attack and had launched an investigation with the assistance of cybersecurity experts.

On July 9, Ingram Micro issued a statement saying it was able to process and ship orders via EDI, phone or email. And on July 10 a statement from the distributor said that it had restored all global business operations.

In August, Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay acknowledged that “certain data was exfiltrated from our systems” during the ransomware attack and said that an investigation was ongoing.

The Ingram Micro attack was just one of many high-visibility attacks in 2025. Companies and government agencies have been targeted by a seemingly nonstop series of cyberattacks — including both disruptive ransomware attacks and incidents focused on data theft and extortion.

On Aug. 30, cloud security technology developer Zscaler issued an advisory warning that attackers had gained access to credentials in Salesloft Drift, a popular third-party Salesforce application, and stolen authentication tokens that allowed them to steal customer data from Salesforce CRM systems. (The breach was first disclosed by the Google Threat Intelligence Group on Aug. 26.)

During the first week of September it became clear that hundreds of businesses and organizations had been impacted in the incident—as well as a number of the cybersecurity industry’s leading companies including Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, CyberArk, and Tenable.

In July a wave of widespread cyberattacks struck customers that use on-premises Microsoft SharePoint servers through exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities. Reports indicated that the victims included U.S. agencies and the Department of Energy confirmed it was “minimally impacted” in the attacks. Researchers at Google Cloud-owned Mandiant and Microsoft pointed to at least some of the attacks originating from China-based threat actors.

Early in the year Ivanti disclosed that a critical-severity, zero-day vulnerability impacting its widely used Connect Secure VPN had been exploited in attacks.

Security experts at Zero Trust World 2025 in February said that cybercrime groups, which follow no code of ethics and have amassed huge amounts of wealth, had become a far more concerning cyberthreat than state-sponsored threat actors. Much of the focus was on ransomware groups who think nothing of attacking targets such as hospitals.

In March Rob Allen, chief product officer of endpoint security vendor ThreatLocker, told attendees at the XChange March 2025 conference said that ransomware gangs had become “more persistent than they ever were” at finding ways to bypass security tools.

No. 5. Google Moves To Buy Cloud Security Startup Wiz For $32B

On March 18, Google parent Alphabet announced that it had inked a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz, a high-flying startup in the cloud security space, for $32 billion in an all-cash deal.

The Google-Wiz deal is just one of a number of multi-billion-dollar acquisitions in the cybersecurity space this year.

If the Wiz acquisition—the largest in Google’s history—is completed, Wiz will become part of Google Cloud, Google’s $48 billion cloud business. Google said the acquisition would accelerate two significant and growing trends in the AI era that Google Cloud is driving: improved cloud security and the ability to implement and use multi-cloud architectures.

“Wiz and Google Cloud share a vision to improve security by making it easier and faster for organizations of all types and sizes to protect themselves, end-to-end, across all major clouds,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in a blog post announcing the acquisition deal.

While the big price tag raised some eyebrows in the industry, CRN reported that Wiz has stood out as a highly unique and disruptive player in the red-hot category of cloud security. Wiz specializes in capabilities that rapidly improve visibility into cloud environments, enabling much faster fixes for misconfigurations and other security gaps in the cloud, and is now extending those capabilities to the increasingly crucial AI security space.

The company’s astronomical growth alone, going from zero to $100 million in annual recurring revenue during its first 18 months in the market and to $500 million in ARR over the next two-and-a half years.

Partners told CRN that the Wiz acquisition will boost Google Cloud’s competitive posture against cloud security rivals Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

And the Wiz deal could be the prelude to a coming wave of merger and acquisition activity in the cloud security space.

But the acquisition already faces potential hurdles from regulators: On June 16 published reports said the U.S. Department of Justice was reviewing whether the acquisition would limit competition in the cloud security space.

Alphabet and Wiz were first reported to be in acquisition talks in 2024 with a reported price tag of $23 billion. But those discussions broke off without a deal—reportedly because Wiz wanted to remain independent.

The cybersecurity space, which some observers have said is ripe for consolidation, has seen a great deal of merger and acquisition activity in 2025 (so far). On July 30 cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks announced an agreement to acquire identity security powerhouse CyberArk for approximately $25 billion. If completed, it would be the biggest acquisition in Palo Alto Network’s history and one of the largest M&A deals in the security industry to date.

Other IT security industry acquisitions in 2025 include Proofpoint’s $1 billion deal to buy Microsoft 365 security specialist Hornetsecurity, Sophos’ completion of its $859 million acquisition of XDR specialist Secureworks, Arctic Wolf’s $160 million purchase of endpoint security provider Cylance, Okta’s deal to buy Axiom Security (with a reported price tag around $100 million) and Zscaler’s recently completed Red Canary acquisition for $675 million in cash, plus equity.

No. 4: The IT Industry Wrestles With Economic Uncertainty And Layoffs

The U.S. economy has sent mixed signals throughout the year in terms of growth, inflation and employment: It experienced its first contraction in three years in the first quarter with real gross domestic production (GDP) falling at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. But the country avoided a recession when growth rebounded in the second quarter to 3.3 percent.

The economic uncertainties, combined with the Trump administration’s constantly shifting tariff policies, have created major challenges for the IT industry and the channel. And it has led to a steady stream of layoffs from major IT companies through the first eight months of the year—the most since the massive wave of layoffs that hit the industry in late 2022 and early 2023.

Microsoft has announced significant layoffs this year, more than 15,000 in total, including cuts to sales and customer-facing positions. So far, Microsoft has portrayed the layoffs more as resource allocation and reduction in management layers than a sign of needing fewer people to do business in a generative AI world. But CEO Satya Nadella publicly revealed in April that AI already writes as much as 30 percent of the company’s code.

Perhaps no company has made deeper cuts to its employee roster than chip maker Intel. In July, as part of its second quarter financial results, the company shocked the industry when it disclosed plans to end 2025 with about 75,000 employees—down about 24,500 workers from the roughly 99,500 employees it had at the end of 2024. (The main driver behind those cuts, however, was the company’s efforts to restructure its business rather than a response to external business conditions.)

The job cuts have taken place across a broad swath of the industry.

On Feb. 5 cloud application giant Salesforce said it was cutting about 1,000 jobs including many in sales and marketing with manager and director titles. The very same day Workday disclosed that it was eliminating about 1,750 jobs, about 1.5 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan.

Just a few weeks later HP Inc. said it planned to lay off up to 2,000 workers “offset macro and geopolitical uncertainties.” In early March, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it would reduce its workforce by 5 percent, about 2,500 employees. And in April, NetApp began a round of layoffs that could impact up to 700 employees or about 6 percent of its workforce.

CrowdStrike said in May that it would cut 500 jobs. On July 17 Lenovo said it was cutting 3 percent of its U.S. workforce while the same day AWS confirmed employee layoffs without disclosing how many or which groups would be impacted. Those cuts came one day after Jamf said it was laying off 6 percent of its staff.

No. 3: Broadcom Acquisition Of VMware Continues To Reverberate Through The Channel

More than a year after Broadcom completed its $61 billion acquisition of virtualization leader VMware in November 2023, the impact of the blockbuster deal continues to send aftershocks through the IT industry and the channel as Broadcom continues its march toward building a smaller, services-focused VMware partner base.

In March CRN reported that starting in April, Broadcom was increasing the cost of VMware for some customers by boosting the minimum purchase from 16 cores to 72 cores. Additionally, Broadcom was implementing a penalty equivalent to 20 percent of the price of a first-year subscription for customers that did not renew their subscription licenses by their anniversary date.

One VMware partner told CRN that the change would particularly hurt partners that are only selling VMware licenses but not offering value beyond that transaction. Another partner said the Broadcom changes would increase costs and push customers to seek alternatives.

In June Broadcom-VMware global channel chief Brian Moats disclosed in a blog post the company’s plan to cut partners in its lowest channel tier from their ability to resell VMware products as the company looked to slim down its partner base. The elimination of the lowest “Registered” tier from the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VMware Resellers reduced the number of partners authorized to resell VMware solutions in the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific and Japan regions.

(Broadcom appointed Moats as its new senior vice president of global commercial sales and partners in early January. He replaced Cindy Loyd who announced in December that she was taking a different job within the company after presiding over sweeping VMware channel changes through 2024.)

The impact of Broadcom’s changes at VMware continues to be felt throughout the industry. In July Acumera acquired Scale Computing in what was seen as a move to create a bigger, more competitive alternative to Broadcom-VMware and seek to capture more market share in the virtualization arena.

Nutanix, meanwhile, has aggressively courted VMware customers to move to its platform, adding more than 600 new customers nearly every quarter since Broadcom’s VMware acquisition. Last month the company reported that its fiscal 2025 sales jumped 18 percent as the company added 2,700 new customers—many of them VMware customers flipping to the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure platform.

No. 2: HPE Resolves DOJ Opposition, Completes $13.4B Juniper Networks Acquisition

On July 2, Hewlett Packard Enterprise ended the long road to complete its $13.4 billion acquisition of networking vendor Juniper Networks. HPE CEO Antonio Neri declared that day the start of a “new era” for HPE as Juniper became a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

HPE announced the deal to buy Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper on Jan. 9, 2024, setting up a competitive battle with Cisco Systems for dominance in the AI networking arena. Juniper was especially strong with its service provider and campus networking businesses as well as its acclaimed Juniper Mist AI portfolio.

But the acquisition plan ran into problems in January of this year when the U.S. Department of Justice sued to halt the deal, claiming the acquisition would “reduce competition and weaken innovation.” What seemed to be a straight-forward acquisition deal through 2024 as the two companies ground through the acquisition process was suddenly thrown into doubt in 2025.

HPE and Juniper called the lawsuit “fundamentally flawed,” setting off about five months of legal wrangling between the companies and the DOJ. All the while CEO Neri expressed confidence that the acquisition would get done.

On June 27 the DOJ agreed to settle the case under an agreement that requires the combined HPE-Juniper to license the source code for Juniper’s Mist AIOps software used in Juniper’s WLAN products and to divest HPE’s Instant On wireless networking business.

“We are not just building a stronger company,” Neri told industry analysts and the press in a conference call just days after the company announced the completion of the deal. “We are establishing an industry powerhouse with the vision, scale and innovation to define and lead the future, one that will serve our customers and partners better than ever and reimagine what is possible.”

HPE and Juniper, the latter now under the name “HPE Juniper Networking,” are now taking steps to leverage the combination of the two companies. Former Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim is now president and general manager of HPE’s $9.6 billion networking business and Juniper channel chief Gordon Mackintosh was named vice president, worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales for HPE.

In an interview with CRN, HPE Networking Senior Vice President of Products Sudheer Matta, one of the executives leading the charge on the HPE-Juniper Networks integration, said the newly combined company is not going to “repeat the mistakes of other large vendors who left customers confused by internal competition.”

In September, CEO Neri announced new sales incentive plans to boost sales of both the Aruba and Juniper Networks product portfolios and eliminate potential sales conflict.

HPE, meanwhile, made a change in its channel leadership in March when Phil Soper stepped aside suddenly from his role as vice president of North America Channels and Partner Ecosystem. In May HPE hired Jeremiah Jenson as vice president of North America channel and partner ecosystem. Jenson worked at AWS for about seven years, including global leader of channel resell partners, and before that worked at HPE for more than 15 years, leaving with the title of vice president of Americas channel sales.

On September 16, HPE named Phil Mottram, previously the head of its Aruba Networking business, as the new head of its global sales efforts.

No. 1: Agents Of Change: The AI Wave Focuses On Agent Technology Development

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, the IT industry has been locked in a frenzy of developing new AI software and incorporating AI capabilities into products.

In 2025 (so far) those development efforts have focused on developing AI agents, autonomous AI systems that can perform tasks and respond to—and learn from—their environment and new data. AI agents are seen as a key component for applying AI technology to mainstream business processes and tasks.

Some agentic AI initiatives are tightly linked with IT companies’ broader AI efforts. Microsoft has aggressively rolled out a series of AI agents that work with its Copilot software and Azure AI Agent Service, pitching agents as an alternative to applications from Salesforce and other competitors. In March Amazon Web Services launched multi-agent collaboration capabilities within Amazon Bedrock, the company’s generative AI and foundational model service.

Other AI agent efforts are intended to bring the benefits of agentic technology to a broad range of tasks. In March Microsoft unveiled a set of six AI agents that work with the company’s Security Copilot program and provide automated capabilities to overworked security teams. In June Hewlett Packard Enterprise debuted its HPE GreenLake Intelligence agentic AI framework that brings autonomous, self-learning AI agent assistants to IT operational management.

In August Google Cloud debuted a series of new data engineering and data science AI agents that work with such flagship products as BigQuery, Spanner, Google Data Cloud and Gemini. It also launched a new “code interpreter” agent that translates complex natural language questions into executable python code.

AI agent technology is being applied to even more mainstream business tasks. In August startup Drata launched an AI agent for vendor risk management, the first of a planned series of AI agent assistants for governance, risk and compliance tasks.

Some IT vendors have focused on providing technology that makes it easier to develop, implement and manage AI agents. Informatica, in addition to developing its own line of data management AI agents, in May unveiled an agentic AI engineering service that can link and manage AI agents throughout an IT network. In June data and AI platform giant Databricks debuted Agent Bricks, a unified workspace for building production-scale AI agents. And in July Kyndryl launched the Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework that aims to ease the deployment of agentic AI to work alongside human teams.

The AI agent wave has driven a number of acquisitions this year. In January ServiceNow struck a deal to buy Cuein, a developer of AI-based data and insights technology, in a move to improve the ability of ServiceNow agents to understand, processes and transform data from customer interactions. And in May ServiceNow said it would buy data.world to help customers leverage agentic AI to automate customer workflows.

At Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the first moves undertaken following the completion of the company’s $13.4 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks was to unveil new agentic AI capabilities for the HPE Juniper Networking Mist platform for creating more autonomous, self-driving enterprise, branch, and data center networks.

Cloudflare is counting on its April purchase of developer database company Outerbase to boost the AI and agent development capabilities of its connectivity cloud service platform. And in July global business and technology services provider Capgemini said it was acquiring India-based WNS for $3.3 billion in a move to build scale in the business process services needed to provide agentic AI capabilities.

As AI agent development accelerates, leading IT companies have sought ways to bring the technology to market. In March Salesforce launched a new online marketplace for its Agentforce AI platform to help partners build and monetize agentic AI components. In April Google Cloud fired up a dedicated section, the AI Agent Marketplace, within the Google Cloud Marketplace where partners can sell agents developed for specific industries and tasks. And in July AWS launched a new AI agents category inside the AWS Marketplace that the cloud giant said would make it easier for partners to sell—and customers to buy—agentic AI solutions. The category had 800 agentic AI offerings at the time of launch.

The wave of AI agent technology is also changing how IT vendors work with the channel and creating opportunities for partners.

At a sales kickoff meeting in January, for example, ServiceNow executives said channel partners would be a key component of the company’s increased focus on AI agents. In June Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told CRN that he and his executive team have ongoing conversations with the global and regional systems integrators the data cloud giant works with about how their business models will change in the agentic AI era.

Google Cloud has emphasized how providing partners with greater access to specialized AI agents around such products as BigQuery will aid solution providers who look to leverage the tech giant’s technology as part of their service offerings and in customer conversations around Google Cloud’s value proposition in data and AI.

And in June HR and financial management application giant Workday launched a new partner program, the Agent Partner Network, for channel and technology partners who build AI agents that connect with Workday’s Agent System of Record platform.