Pilot purgatory (PoC purgatory)
When AI proofs of concept and pilots keep running or get dropped without reaching production, or go live but cost more in human oversight than they save.
By late 2026 the stall had moved. G2’s 2026 AI Agents Report, a survey of more than 1,000 B2B software buyers published in October 2026, found 66% of organizations running agents in limited or scaled production, yet 45% said overseeing and correcting agents eats more than a quarter of the expected gains; G2 calls it the distrust tax, and buyers call the work bot-sitting. Pilots still get stuck the old way: a demo works, nobody on the business side owns it, there are no success criteria and no budget for integrations. Roles like the Forward Deployed Engineer exist largely to get past this stage.
Related terms
- Proof of concept vs pilot (PoC, POV): A proof of concept shows something can work on sample data; a pilot runs it for real users on real data; a proof of value measures whether it pays.
- Pilot success criteria (exit criteria): Measurable conditions agreed before a pilot starts that decide whether it passed and the buyer moves to a full contract.
- Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE): An engineer who works with a customer or business team to turn AI models into systems that run in their environment.
- Evals: A repeatable test set that scores an AI feature, so changes can be measured instead of guessed.
