A survey of 2,000 CEOs by IBM finds 37% saying it’s better to be “fast and wrong” than “right and slow” when adopting technology in general. Specifically on AI, a striking 64% admitted adoption was prompted by the “risk” of falling behind rather than clear understanding of what it would bring to the business. But CEOs look on the sunny side, with 85% expecting positive ROI on AI by, oh, 2027.

Today’s frontier in AI-land is agents reading external data (MCP) and cooperating with other agents (A2A). So it’s almost charmingly retro to see digital experience vendor Optimizely proudly announce that its upgraded Opal AI tool lets users create embedded agents with access to data across the Optimizely One platform. Users also get a new interface, prebuilt tool library to tackle tasks like creating presentations and analyzing web pages, and agents that specialize in specific marketing tasks.

CDP Zeta Global has unveiled Athena, a “superintelligent” voice-activated interface that delivers instant answers, smarter decisions, and agentic actions throughout the Zeta platform. It activates a suite of agentic apps that can adapt to each user’s specific goals and styles. Early access will begin later this year, with a suite of agentic apps to follow in the first half of next year.