The Agentic Enterprise: A Leader's Guide to Orchestrating, Governing, and Scaling AI Agent Systems

Agentic AI promises new levels of automation and adaptability, but it also introduces complexity in governance, interoperability, and scale. To navigate these challenges, leaders need a clear adoption playbook. This guide gives them a practical framework for understanding what agentic AI can--and can't--do, identifying the right opportunities, and designing enterprise systems that are flexible, secure, extensible, trustworthy, reliable, and aligned with business priorities.

Blending strategy with architecture-level guidance, Cognizant's Babak Hodjat and Alpha Capital's Antoine Blondeau show senior technology leaders how to evaluate readiness, avoid vendor lock-in, manage risk, and prepare their organizations for the future of multi-agent orchestration. CxOs, VPs, directors, and engineering leaders tasked with evaluating, implementing, and scaling AI systems will learn best practices and actionable advice for steering cross-functional teams, setting technical direction, and aligning AI initiatives with business value.

• Understand what agentic AI is and when it creates real business value
• Determine whether your organization is ready for agentic AI and identify use cases
• Make smart build-versus-buy decisions and avoid lock-in
• Lead teams in rolling out agentic AI at scale
• Put guardrails in place for safe and responsible use
• Plan a long-term AI strategy that adapts as the tech evolves

Author: Babak Hodjat,Antoine Blondeau
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Published: 09/01/2026
Pages: 189
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.19h x 7.00w x 0.41d
ISBN: 9798341672512

About the Author
Hodjat, Babak: - "Babak Hodjat (https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babak_Hodjat) is the CTO for AI at Cognizant where he leads the Advanced AI Labs, a team of developers and researchers bringing advanced AI solutions to businesses. Babak is the former co-founder and CEO of Sentient, responsible for the core technology behind the world's largest distributed artificial intelligence system. Babak was also the founder of the world's first AI-driven hedge-fund, Sentient Investment Management. Babak is a serial entrepreneur, having started a number of Silicon Valley companies as main inventor and technologist. Prior to co-founding Sentient, Babak was senior director of engineering at Sybase iAnywhere, where he led mobile solutions engineering. Prior to Sybase, Babak was co-founder, CTO and board member of Dejima Inc. Babak is the primary inventor of Dejima's patented, agent-oriented technology applied to intelligent interfaces for mobile and enterprise computing - the technology behind Apple's Siri. Babak has published many papers in the fields of Artificial Life, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence, and has 39 issued US patents to his name. He is an expert in numerous fields of AI, including natural language processing, machine learning, genetic algorithms, distributed AI, and has founded multiple companies in these areas. Babak holds a PhD in Machine Intelligence from Kyushu University, in Fukuoka, Japan. Babak is also the author of "The Narrator", an AI science fiction novella, and "The Konar and the Apple", a collection of short stories based on his youth."Blondeau, Antoine: - Operating out of Dubai (UAE) and the United States, Antoine Blondeau is a visionary technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital (AIC), a $450m venture capital firm investing in deep Artificial Intelligence technology companies worldwide. AIC's investments include OpenAI, Aidoc, Envelop Risk, Higgsfield, ZeroEyes, Instadeep (sold to BioNTech), Reaqta (sold to IBM), AImusic (sold to Apple), GetVisibility (sold to Forcepoint). Over the past 25 years Antoine has dedicated himself to the development of Artificial Intelligence. He was the CEO of Dejima, the company that powered DARPA's foundational CALO project that evolved into Apple's Siri. Antoine was also President and COO of Nasdaq-listed Zi Corporation, whose predictive text input software was embedded in hundreds of millions of devices. He was the co-founder and CEO of Sentient Technologies, a leading San Francisco Bay Area deep AI technology startup that pioneered massively-scaled Artificial Intelligence.

Antoine has held senior leadership positions at Good Technology, Salesforce, and Sybase. He is an advisor to KKR, Pictet, and BITKRAFT Ventures. Antoine is also board chair of crypto.com, one of the world's largest blockchain and cryptocurrency full-service platforms.

In addition to his fund investments, Antoine has made over 40 personal investments in deep technology firms, including SpaceX, Epic Games, Jio Platforms, Boom Supersonic, DoubleDutch (acquired by Cvent), PeerIQ (acquired by Cross River Bank), GammaNow (acquired by Animoca Brands), GoShare, KeyMe, Evolv, K Health, Inworld, Liminal, Jabali, and Alethea. He is a founding member and General Partner of Zinc, a London-based social impact-focused technology startup incubator.

Antoine started to code at age 11. He is the author of 4 patents.