Agentic AI will not live only in the cloud. As AI agents move from answering prompts to taking action, devices become the edge of the experience, where context is created, identity is verified, permissions are enforced, and real-world signals are captured.

As AI agents move from answering prompts to taking action, devices will play a critical role in how agents sense context, verify identity, enforce permissions, and orchestrate across cloud and physical environments.


What this means for you:

  • Context, identity, and permissions are moving closer to the device
  • The cloud alone cannot deliver autonomous, context-aware experiences
  • Trust will determine who controls the agentic experience — and leading organizations are already moving
Presented at IDC Directions 2026, Boston, April 8, 2026 by Tom Mainelli, Group Vice President, Device & Consumer Research, IDC, and Bryan Ma, Vice President, Devices Research, IDC. The insight from this session is now available to access.

What you'll Explore

  • Why the first wave of hardware-based AI capabilities did not significantly shift inference from the cloud
  • How AI agents change the role of devices in enterprise and consumer experiences
  • Why devices matter for context, identity, permissions, sensors, personalisation, and local orchestration
  • How trust becomes a critical gatekeeper for on-device agentic AI
  • Which enablers may determine how quickly agentic AI at the edge begins to scale

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