There is a growing trend to sell agent systems as something separate and new. Vendors present agents as standalone platforms or products, positioned almost as a new category in the software stack. But this way of thinking misses where the real value is likely to appear.

The companies that sit on the real domain knowledge and the customer relationships are the providers of domain-specific systems – what we might call specialist SaaS or professional line-of-business systems. These are the vendors of domain systems built around specific fields, regulations, and workflows. Think of companies like SAP, Unit4, and similar providers of ERP, HR, finance, and sector solutions. They already understand the details of how work is done and have long-term relationships with their customers.

Because of this, the main value will not be created in the development of foundation models themselves. Foundation models are important building blocks, but they are becoming infrastructure: powerful, accessible, and increasingly standardized. The real value will be created where these models are connected to concrete domains – inside the systems that already encode business rules, data structures, and everyday workflows.

That means the companies delivering domain-specific systems are in a key position. When they build agents directly into their products, those agents can operate on structured domain data, respect the rules that matter, and support users in the context of the actual work they do. Instead of a generic agent sitting outside the system, you get embedded capabilities: agents that can, for example, assist with financial processes, HR routines, logistics decisions, or sector-specific case handling based on real configuration and data in those systems.

A second group that will capture value is the companies that build specialized solutions for individual organizations – typically consultancy firms and integrators. These companies can take language models and agents and tailor them to the unique processes, policies, and terminology of a single customer. They connect different systems, understand local variations and exceptions, and design agents that fit how that organization actually works. This kind of customization is usually more valuable than a generic “agent platform” that does not understand the specific domain.

Putting this together, the important shift is to stop seeing agent systems as something to be sold and used on their own. The real opportunity is in agents that are part of domain-specific systems, built and delivered by vendors who already own the domain knowledge and the customer relationship, and by consultants who can adapt solutions to individual organizations. The foundation models are necessary, but they are not where most of the economic value will be captured. That will happen in the domain systems and in the specialized solutions that sit close to real businesses and real workflows.