Summary
Executives are changing the word they use for artificial intelligence. On S&P 500 earnings calls held from July to September 2026, 20.3% used the word “agentic”, up from 0.2% in January to March 2024. Over the same period the share that said “generative AI” fell from 16.8% to 5.6%. The two lines crossed in October to December 2025, and in October 2026 so far 22 of 78 calls, or 28.2%, have used “agentic”.
AI itself is discussed more than ever. 69.5% of calls held from July to September 2026 mentioned AI, against 43.1% in early 2024, and the average call mentioned it 11.13 times, up from 4.84.
“Agentic” is a management word. Company speakers said it 371 times on last quarter's calls and analysts 46 times, and on 83 of the 97 calls that used it an executive said it first. DeepSeek was the opposite: when it came up on 53 calls in January to March 2025, an analyst raised it first on 31 of them.
Among AI developers, OpenAI is still named most often, on 8.4% of calls last quarter, but Anthropic has closed most of the gap. Anthropic or its Claude models came up on 6.5% of calls, against 1.1% in early 2024, and on as many October calls as OpenAI.
The data behind this piece
Explore the primary data Equibles carries for DDOG:
Abstract
We count the words “agentic”, “generative AI” and “AI”, and the names of nine AI developers and their products, on 5,305 earnings calls held by 494 current S&P 500 companies from 5 January 2024 to 23 October 2026, using the speaker-by-speaker transcripts in the Equibles earnings call archive. Calls are grouped by the calendar quarter in which they were held. October 2026 is reported separately because the quarter is not over.
The share of calls using “agentic” rose from one call in January to March 2024 to a peak of 20.5% in April to June 2026, and held at 20.3% in July to September 2026. Mentions of “generative AI” fell from 459 in January to March 2024 to 40 in July to September 2026. 174 of the 494 companies have used “agentic” at least once. Technology companies used it on 53.0% of their calls last quarter, while no energy, utility or basic materials company used it at all. Calls naming OpenAI or ChatGPT outnumbered calls naming Anthropic or Claude by 17 to 5 in January to March 2024 and by 40 to 31 in July to September 2026.
How “agentic” replaced “generative AI”
The word was almost absent before late 2024. The first call in our sample to use it was Datadog (DDOG $269.65 +4.62%)'s on 13 February 2024, when an analyst asked about “agentic usage of large language models”. The first executive to say it was AIG chairman Peter Zaffino, on the company's 31 July 2024 call.
“As we build our agentic ecosystem, we're using a multi-vendor technology strategy with multiple partners that is designed to evolve over time.”
Peter Zaffino, chairman, AIG, earnings call, 31 July 2024
A wave followed in October to December 2024, when ServiceNow, Cadence Design Systems, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, Synopsys and Kroger all used the word, and the share of calls rose from 0.2% to 2.3%. It has grown in every quarter since except the last, when it slipped from 20.5% to 20.3%.
“Generative AI”, the phrase of 2023 and 2024, held between 14.6% and 16.8% of calls until January to March 2025, then fell. It came up on 27 calls last quarter, against 80 in early 2024, and the number of times it was said fell 91%, from 459 to 40. In mentions, “agentic” passed “generative AI” in July to September 2025; in the share of calls, it passed a quarter later.
The switch shows up company by company. Of the 79 companies that said “generative AI” on a call held from July to September 2024, 76 held a call in the same months of 2026. On those calls, 40 said “agentic” and 17 still said “generative AI”.
| Calls held | Calls | Said “agentic” | Said “generative AI” | Mentioned AI | AI mentions per call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January to March 2024 | 476 | 0.2% | 16.8% | 43.1% | 4.84 |
| April to June 2024 | 481 | 0.0% | 16.6% | 46.2% | 5.81 |
| July to September 2024 | 487 | 0.2% | 16.2% | 47.4% | 5.57 |
| October to December 2024 | 487 | 2.3% | 14.6% | 46.0% | 5.18 |
| January to March 2025 | 475 | 6.3% | 16.0% | 52.2% | 6.26 |
| April to June 2025 | 474 | 8.0% | 10.5% | 46.2% | 5.61 |
| July to September 2025 | 467 | 11.8% | 15.2% | 61.5% | 7.62 |
| October to December 2025 | 461 | 14.5% | 12.8% | 65.5% | 8.94 |
| January to March 2026 | 473 | 17.8% | 11.6% | 69.8% | 11.04 |
| April to June 2026 | 468 | 20.5% | 8.3% | 69.2% | 11.51 |
| July to September 2026 | 478 | 20.3% | 5.6% | 69.5% | 11.13 |
| 1 to 23 October 2026 | 78 | 28.2% | 3.8% | 71.8% | 11.62 |
AI talk is still growing
The new vocabulary sits on top of more AI talk overall. The share of calls mentioning AI rose from 43.1% to 69.5%, and mentions per call more than doubled, from 4.84 to 11.13. The biggest step came in July to September 2025, when the share jumped from 46.2% to 61.5%.
The phrase “AI agents” followed the same path at a lower level. It came up on 0.4% of calls in early 2024, 8.4% last quarter and 19.2% of the calls held so far in October.
Who says “agentic”
The word comes from the companies, not from the analysts questioning them. Of the 469 times it was said on calls held from July to September 2026, 371 came from executives and other company speakers, 46 from analysts and 52 from speakers our transcripts could not identify. On 83 of the 97 calls that used the word, a company speaker said it first; an analyst said it first on 7. Calls that used it at all averaged 4.84 mentions.
DeepSeek, the Chinese AI developer, ran the other way. It appeared on 53 calls held between 27 January and 6 March 2025, starting with AT&T's on the day its model unsettled AI stocks. An analyst raised it first on 31 of those 53 calls, usually to ask what cheaper, more efficient models meant for the company, from demand for chips and data centers to its own AI spending.
Which sectors use it
Technology companies used “agentic” on 53.0% of their calls held from July to September 2026, up from 40.7% a year earlier. The fastest growth came from sectors that barely used it a year ago. Consumer Defensive companies, the consumer staples group, went from one call to 8 of 31, including Walmart, Target, Costco, Dollar General, Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills, Tyson Foods and Estée Lauder. Real estate went from one call to 6 of 27, led by the data center owners Equinix, Digital Realty and Iron Mountain. Equinix's chief executive put the word at the center of its pitch on the July 2026 call.
“And now, as inference and agentic AI unleash extraordinary capabilities alongside new layers of complexity, we are the neutral exchange where customers can run, connect, and orchestrate it all.”
Adaire Fox-Martin, chief executive, Equinix, earnings call, 29 July 2026
No energy, utility or basic materials company used the word in either period, even though 71.4% of energy calls and 39.3% of utility calls mentioned AI last quarter, often in connection with power demand from data centers.
| Sector | Calls, July to September 2025 | Said “agentic” | Share | Calls, July to September 2026 | Said “agentic” | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | 81 | 33 | 40.7% | 83 | 44 | 53.0% |
| Communication Services | 19 | 3 | 15.8% | 19 | 5 | 26.3% |
| Consumer Defensive | 26 | 1 | 3.8% | 31 | 8 | 25.8% |
| Financial Services | 67 | 9 | 13.4% | 68 | 17 | 25.0% |
| Real Estate | 30 | 1 | 3.3% | 27 | 6 | 22.2% |
| Consumer Cyclical | 47 | 5 | 10.6% | 51 | 6 | 11.8% |
| Industrials | 70 | 1 | 1.4% | 73 | 8 | 11.0% |
| Healthcare | 59 | 2 | 3.4% | 57 | 3 | 5.3% |
| Basic Materials | 19 | 0 | 0.0% | 19 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Energy | 19 | 0 | 0.0% | 21 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Utilities | 30 | 0 | 0.0% | 28 | 0 | 0.0% |
The companies that say it most
Adobe (ADBE $263.82 -2.49%) used “agentic” 27 times on its September 2026 call, the most of any call held from July to September 2026. Cadence Design Systems (CDNS $316.49 +2.21%) followed with 24 and Roper Technologies (ROP $438.14 +0.44%) with 20. ServiceNow (NOW $158.96 +1.25%), one of the first companies to adopt the word in 2024, used it 17 times. Software companies dominate the list, but the payment networks Visa (V $407.92 -1.55%) and Mastercard (MA $623.60 -1.52%) and the broker Robinhood (HOOD $95.07 -1.56%) are in it too.
Agentic commerce
For payment companies the word has a specific meaning: AI agents that shop and pay on a customer's behalf. “Agentic commerce” came up on 12 or 13 calls a quarter from October 2025 to June 2026, and on 6 calls held from July to September 2026: American Express, Visa, Coinbase, Mastercard, Global Payments and Costco. Visa's chief executive named it as one of two priorities on the July 2026 call.
“I want to touch on two areas where we are deploying our new way of working with great impact, Stablecoin and Agentic Commerce.”
Ryan McInerney, chief executive, Visa, earnings call, 28 July 2026
Not every retailer accepts the label. Asked by an analyst about agentic commerce on the September 2026 call, Costco's chief financial officer said he was not sure he would call it that, and described something narrower.
“What we see is more members definitely using AI as a tool to help them search for items as they're looking and thinking about shopping for different products and services.”
Gary Millerchip, chief financial officer, Costco, earnings call, 24 September 2026
Which AI developers companies name
OpenAI is still the AI developer named on the most S&P 500 calls. Calls naming OpenAI or ChatGPT rose from 3.6% in early 2024 to a peak of 11.6% in January to March 2026, then eased to 8.4%. Anthropic or its Claude models rose from 1.1% to 6.8% over the same period and stood at 6.5% last quarter. In January to March 2024 OpenAI was named on 3.4 calls for every one naming Anthropic; last quarter the ratio was 1.3. On calls held so far in October, each was named on five.
The exception was DeepSeek. In January to March 2025 it came up on 11.2% of calls, the highest share any AI developer reached until OpenAI's 11.6% a year later. It fell to 10 calls the next quarter and to none in July to September 2026.
Anthropic is named mostly by technology and financial companies: of the 67 companies that named it on a 2026 call, 27 are in technology and 21 in financial services. Data providers such as S&P Global, Moody's, MSCI and FactSet described making their data available to Claude, several through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). 88 companies named OpenAI or ChatGPT on a 2026 call.
Google's Gemini, counted only on other companies' calls, rose from 0.2% of calls in early 2024 to 3.4% in January to March 2026 and 2.1% last quarter. Microsoft's Copilot, counted only on other companies' calls, has stayed between 2.1% and 4.6% throughout. Meta's Llama, counted only on other companies' calls, fell from 1.0% in mid-2024 to 0.2%, and xAI or Grok has never passed 2.0%.
| AI developer | Calls, January to March 2024 | Share | Calls, July to September 2026 | Share | Companies naming it on a 2026 call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI or ChatGPT | 17 | 3.6% | 40 | 8.4% | 88 |
| Anthropic or Claude | 5 | 1.1% | 31 | 6.5% | 67 |
| Google Gemini (not on Alphabet calls) | 1 | 0.2% | 10 | 2.1% | 33 |
| Microsoft Copilot (not on Microsoft calls) | 10 | 2.1% | 12 | 2.5% | 24 |
| xAI or Grok | 1 | 0.2% | 8 | 1.7% | 15 |
| DeepSeek | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 2 |
| Perplexity | 2 | 0.4% | 2 | 0.4% | 10 |
| Mistral | 3 | 0.6% | 2 | 0.4% | 5 |
| Meta Llama (not on Meta calls) | 2 | 0.4% | 1 | 0.2% | 3 |
Methodology
Sample: earnings calls held from 5 January 2024 to 23 October 2026 by the 498 companies in the S&P 500 on 22 October 2026. One call per company and fiscal quarter; where duplicates exist, the longest transcript is kept. Calls without transcript text (210) and calls under 1,500 words (4) are excluded. The result is 5,305 calls from 494 companies, between 461 and 487 a full quarter. Unlike our tariff study, utilities are included, because none of the counted words has a utility-specific meaning.
Text: the speaker-by-speaker transcripts in the Equibles earnings call archive.
Counting: case-insensitive whole-word matches.
- “Agentic”: words starting with “agentic” (agentic, agentics, agentically), plus the speech-recognition spellings “agentec”, “agentech” and “a gentic”, and “a genetic” when the next word is AI, commerce, workflows or a similar term.
- “Generative AI”: “generative AI”, “GenAI”, “gen AI” or “generative artificial intelligence”.
- AI: “AI”, “A.I.” or “artificial intelligence”. “AI agents”: “AI agent” or “AI agents”.
- OpenAI: “OpenAI”, “Open AI”, “ChatGPT” or a GPT model name. Anthropic: “Anthropic”, or “Claude” with an AI term within about 90 characters, which excludes executives and board members named Claude.
- Google Gemini: “Gemini” near an AI or Google term, never on Alphabet's own calls. Microsoft Copilot: “Copilot”, never on Microsoft's own calls. Meta Llama: “Llama”, never on Meta's own calls. Also counted: DeepSeek, xAI or Grok, Mistral and Perplexity.
Who said it: the speaker's role in the transcript. Executives, chairs and investor relations staff count as company speakers.
Periods: the calendar quarter in which the call was held, not the fiscal quarter it reports. Calls held from July to September 2026 mostly report results for April to June 2026.
Sectors: the company's sector classification on Equibles.
Limitations
The sample is today's index, so companies that left the S&P 500 since 2024 are missing and companies that joined are included for their full history. A word count measures attention, not spending; a company can invest heavily in AI agents and rarely say “agentic”. “Agentic” is one adjective and “generative AI” one phrase, so the comparison is between two ways of describing AI, not two technologies.
Most transcripts before 2026 and after come from different transcription processes. Where both were common in the same quarter, they gave similar results: in July to September 2025, 11.7% and 12.0% of calls used “agentic”, and 61.8% and 60.8% mentioned AI. Speech recognition can misspell words, which is why the counts include variant spellings. October 2026 covers only the first 78 calls of the reporting season, which come mostly from financial and industrial companies, so its shares are not comparable with a full quarter.
Conclusion
In under two years “agentic” went from one analyst's question to the word a fifth of S&P 500 companies use to describe their AI plans, and it has taken the place “generative AI” held in 2024. It is a word executives choose rather than one analysts press them on, and outside technology it has spread fastest among retailers, payment networks and data center landlords. Among the AI developers companies name, Anthropic has nearly caught OpenAI.
Every company's earnings call transcripts on Equibles come with the call audio and speaker names, and the free Equibles MCP server can count any word or phrase across a company's recent calls, so an AI agent can run the same check on a single stock. Our earlier study, Are Companies Still Talking About Tariffs?, applies the same count to tariff mentions on the same calls.