The new Gartner Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI is out. What stands out this year? 👉 Despite the explosion of AI vendors, only a very small number of companies actually qualified to be listed. This says a lot: The barrier to delivering enterprise-grade Conversational AI is still very high. Many “AI-first” startups remain focused on demos and hype rather than scalable, secure deployments. Enterprises need more than chat — they need orchestration, integration, governance, and measurable outcomes. With so many new logos in the market, this is a good reminder that not every vendor riding the AI wave can actually swim. 🏊♂️
Tom Fisher
7mo
It is interesting coming into this conversation late and watching it devolve into a relevance discussion of these reports. I empathize with all the teams trying to put them together, it is insanely hard and you can't please everyone. Having served my time as a CIO for 5 years trying to not get fired by buying from these reports I get it. If you choose anything not from them you can expect the board to be all over you. What's the old sane from the 90's? "You don't get fired buying IBM." Because they were top right. Having said that, these reports are for another era where things went way slower. They are for the era of point solutions vs all-in one or on prem vs cloud etc. Where the transitions were measured in years vs. weeks. The issue is, the entire world has just sped up, the idea of an annual report vs. monthly is where the issue is. The barriers of entry to get into these reports are the problem. They don't measure impact, they measure revenue and reach. In the older days getting to $40M ARR for example which is one of the barometers for these reports to be qualified took decades. Today? It can take weeks. How can we possibly expect them to keep up?
Mark Leibowitz
7mo
I would seriously question the leadership section. Having worked at a couple of the leaders mentioned and knowing the landscape well if anything Yellow should be in the leadership section due to their robust platform, ease of integration and being ahead of the curve in Generative and Agentic AI. Additionally there are other new players not even mentioned here. No validity in this report from The leaders section.
Jari Annala
6mo
Right to the point. Anybody can build a Coversational AI Bot. Today it easier than ever. Building an enterprise grade solution is complete different game. Many clients (and founders and investors) unfortunately do not understand it, at least not before they try and fail.
RBM Software
7mo
The latest MQ reinforces a hard truth, scalable Conversational AI isn’t about flashy demos, it’s about orchestration, governance, and real enterprise outcomes.
Shashwat Ghosh
7mo
I've been tracking Gartner for two decades for multiple companies. I can confidently say the reason mentioned in the post is not accurate. There are multiple reasons why the new AI companies aren’t featured in MQ. The main reason is the subscription cost commitment. If you are not a Gartner subscriber, you cannot even make it for evaluation phase.
Cobus Greyling
7mo
Edgars, your observations are very accurate and astute...I love the fact that Gartner included use-cases which are expanding to AI Agents and tools. Also the fact that platforms are rated for complex automation and multimodal interactions. Gartner says in the report that by year-end 2027, conversational AI applications will automate approximately 70% of customer support interactions within enterprises, up from approximately 50% in 2025. What shocked me is. the fact that IBM fell back so far...lastly...Kore.ai is way in the lead with ability to execute...
Fractics•3K followers
7moThis really resonates. Having built an enterprise-grade Conversational AI platform myself, I’ve seen first-hand that the real challenge isn’t the model or the chat interface — it’s orchestration, compliance, integration, and measurable business impact. Demos can wow in a pitch, but only scalable deployments separate the companies who ride the wave from those who can actually swim