You probably have too many AI tools.

Not because you're bad at choosing software. Because every vendor spent 2024 convincing you their AI agent was the one you needed. And you believed them—multiple times.

The result? AI agent sprawl. A mess of overlapping subscriptions, disconnected workflows, and a monthly bill that keeps climbing while productivity gains remain elusive.

Here's what's happening and what to do about it.

A recent analysis found that small and medium businesses are losing nearly $18,000 per employee annually to AI and SaaS tool sprawl. Not because the tools don't work—but because they overlap, compete, and create friction instead of flow.

The pattern is predictable:

Now you're paying for four tools that all do some version of the same thing, none of them talk to each other, and your team is spending more time switching between interfaces than actually getting work done.

Sound familiar?

Every software company added "AI" to their product in 2024. Most of them bolted on a ChatGPT wrapper and called it innovation. The result: your existing tools now have AI features that overlap with the standalone AI tools you also bought.

In small teams, anyone can sign up for a $20/month tool. No procurement process. No stack review. Just a credit card and a problem to solve. Multiply that by every person on your team, and you've got sprawl.

Every week brought a new "game-changing" AI agent. Miss it and you're falling behind. Buy it and... well, you'll figure out how to use it later. (You won't.)

The major players have noticed. And they're responding with platforms designed to be your only AI layer.

OpenAI's Operator is designed to control your computer directly—browsing the web, filling out forms, completing multi-step tasks. One agent to rule them all.

Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK lets developers build agents that can read files, run commands, search the web, and edit code autonomously. The infrastructure for consolidated agent workflows.

Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Autonomous Agents launched 10 pre-built agents for sales, customer service, and operations—all within the Microsoft ecosystem. If you're already in Microsoft, why go elsewhere?

Google's Gemini Deep Research Agent can autonomously plan, execute, and synthesize multi-step research tasks. Research that used to require three different tools now happens in one.

The message is clear: the era of point solutions is ending. The era of platform agents is beginning.

Short term: You're going to keep paying for tools you don't fully use. That's okay. The switching costs are real, and the platforms aren't mature yet.

Medium term (6-12 months): The platforms will get good enough that consolidation makes sense. When OpenAI's Operator can do what your AI writing tool, AI research tool, and AI scheduling tool do—but better and in one place—the decision becomes obvious.

Long term: Your AI stack will look like your cloud stack. One or two major platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft) plus a few specialized tools for niche use cases. The 47-tool chaos of 2024 will seem absurd in retrospect.

List every AI tool your team uses. Include the "free trials" that became paid subscriptions and the tools people forgot they signed up for. You'll be surprised.

Which tools do similar things? You probably have multiple tools that can:

Pick one. Cancel the others.

If you're going to invest time learning a new AI tool, make it one of the major platforms. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. These are the tools that will absorb the functionality of the point solutions over time.

The next "revolutionary" AI agent can probably wait. The platforms are moving fast. What requires a specialized tool today might be a built-in feature tomorrow.

AI agent sprawl is the SaaS sprawl of 2020 all over again—but faster and more expensive.

The solution isn't to stop using AI. It's to use fewer AI tools, more intentionally, with a bias toward platforms over point solutions.

The consolidation is coming whether you're ready or not. Might as well get ahead of it.

by WB
for the AdAI Ed. Team