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AI Inference Infrastructure Optimization Demands Token Economics–Driven Decision-Making

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective shares an overview of how, as enterprises scale AI from experimentation to production, the explosive growth of inference workloads and agentic AI pipelines is making token cost management a board-level financial priority. Token economics (aka “Tokenomics”), the discipline of measuring, governing, and optimizing the full cost of AI token production and consumption, is emerging as the essential framework for every AI infrastructure, architectural, and purchasing decision.

IDC recommends that technology buyers build a full-stack token cost model capturing all infrastructure layers, including compute, storage, networking, power, cooling, and datacenter facilities, when comparing on-premises/dedicated versus cloud-based AI infrastructure options. “Enterprises need to reframe AI infrastructure decisions around token economics to accurately represent the true cost and benefits of AI infrastructure investments at scale,” explains Mary Johnston Turner, IDC research vice president, AI Infrastructure Strategies.

Gradial’s Bid to Become the Execution Layer for Enterprise Marketing

Gerry Murray — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Gradial, the Seattle-based agentic marketing operations company, announced a $65 million Series C on June 17, 2026. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from VMG Partners, Madrona and PruVen Capital. The financing values Gradial at $675 million and brings its reported capital raised to more than $110 million over 16 months. The company had closed a $35 million Series B in December 2025.

Gradial provides an orchestration and execution layer that simplifies and unifies the user experience across complex martech stacks. Its value proposition is based on removing the queues, handoffs and repetitive production work that slows enterprise marketing operations. Supported integrations include Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Workfront, Sitecore, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, Jira, Figma, Wrike, Bynder and other content, workflow and campaign systems. The new funding reflects investor confidence in its "chat as workflow" vision for the future work of marketing..

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Are IT and Line-of-Business Buyers Approaching Growing Content and Experience Demands Differently?

Jordan Jewell — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how enterprises are keeping up with growing content and experience demands, comparing the approaches IT and line-of-business buyers are adopting. The results, from IDC's 2025 CX Path Survey, reveal that while both groups prioritize AI agents for the content supply chain, their strategies diverge sharply after that: IT bets on generative AI and in-house teams, while line-of-business buyers rely more on freelancers, existing authors, and external content sources.

Broadcom Mainframe AR Forum 2026: Agentic AI Comes to the Mainframe on the Platform's Own Terms

Jim Mercer — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At its 2026 Analyst Forum in Boston, Broadcom's Mainframe Software Division (MSD) laid out an agentic AI strategy anchored in the idea that AI capabilities belong within products customers already license, not in separate AI-branded SKUs that require new procurement cycles. The company unveiled an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server road map spanning its DevOps, Data Management, and AIOps value streams, with several tools already in beta under existing entitlements. Broadcom also reaffirmed Open Mainframe Project Zowe's role as the open source integration layer enabling both modern developer tooling and MCP-based AI connectivity.

Industry Conversation Handbook: Worldwide Retail, 2026

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation is designed to provide general and synthetic knowledge to support technology suppliers' salespeople when they first approach retail buyers. The IDC Industry Conversation Handbook is aimed at igniting meaningful customer engagement, addressing the following questions:

What is the industry structure and what are the key business processes?
How can you improve your sales approach to better address the needs of potential buyers?
Learn how specific technologies interact with this industry and how to position your offerings to meet industry requirements effectively.
Communicate competently with buyers by using language that resonates with them, initiating conversations, and asking questions that are relevant to their interests and needs.
Showcase the most appropriate products/services that meet the buyer's needs, illustrating with real-life examples how they can be advantageous to the buyer.

The topics discussed in this Industry Conversation Handbook are selected by IDC analysts based on in-depth and ongoing IDC research about the key technologies applied to operations within the retail industry.

The handbook equips sales professionals with basic information concerning the retail industry to contact buyers with confidence. It provides a toolkit to spark discussions, helping salespeople show preparedness and stimulate interest in technology buyers with significant conversational teasers and examples. It does not provide an in-depth analysis of the industry or of buyer personas, nor does it seek to present a comprehensive sales strategy.

"Retailers that want to invest in 2026 aren't choosing the latest technology, but rather the partners that can demonstrate operational results at store scale," said Filippo Battaini, research manager, IDC Retail Insights. "Vendors that focus every conversation on key retail KPIs (accuracy, shrinkage, conversion, uptime) will win the next meeting."

Same Models, Same Data, and Same Results: Why Retail AI Needs Competitive Potency

Ananda Chakravarty — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the role of competitive potency in retail AI. AI has proven measurable ROI in retail. Companies such as Sephora, Kroger, Tesco, The Home Depot, and Dollar General have all witnessed the benefits of AI. However, widespread adoption erodes competitive advantage. The new game is competitive potency. This is the ability to exceed your competitors using AI, grow faster, capture more market share, and move ahead in the game. The gains AI brings are just table stakes; to move faster requires something more. More than just nuances of AI technology, one should learn how to use it to build competitive potency for their organization.

“When everyone has AI, competitive advantage vanishes. True potency lies in how you secure, differentiate, and trust your data, processes, and people,” says Ananda Chakravarty, VP Research, IDC Retail Insights.

Ivalua Launches IVA Studio: IVA Is All Grown Up — a Polished and Powerful Showcase for the Ivalua AI Strategy

Patrick Reymann — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Ivalua has formalized the general availability of IVA (Intelligent Virtual Agent) and its underlying agentic engine, IVA Studio, marking a decisive step beyond the chatbot era into fully agentic, autonomous procurement execution. Built on a 100% organically developed, unified S2P data platform, IVA is architected as a true cross-platform single agent, capable of taking action across the entire S2P life cycle from supplier onboarding and sourcing through contract management, eprocurement, and accounts payable, eliminating the hassle of today's agent swarm with governance enforced at every step, LLM portability, and a compounding skills framework that converts organizational expertise into reusable, auditable AI behavior. IVA is not a bolt-on or an API-connected overlay; it is a platform that acts with intelligence, and it is ready from day 1.

Publicis to Acquire LiveRamp: Data Co-Creation Becomes the Foundation for Agentic Identity Management

Gerry Murray, Douglas Hayward, Roger Beharry Lall, Tapan Patel — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Publicis’s $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp is the decisive move in the holdco identity arms race, combining Epsilon’s deterministic identity graph with LiveRamp’s secure co-creation infrastructure to establish a structural competitive advantage in identity management for humans and agents. Brands, independent agencies, publishers, and retail media networks must reassess vendor dependencies.

“By combining Epsilon’s deterministic identity spine with LiveRamp’s secure co-creation infrastructure, Publicis has turned data sharing from an industry utility into a structural competitive advantage, and that changes the economics of the entire adtech ecosystem,” says Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Apps and Agents, IDC.

ServiceNow Evolves Strategic Planning, Collaboration, Enterprise Architecture, and AI Governance

Melinda-Carol Ballou — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The Age of AI Content Marketing & Human Creativity

Jordan Jewell — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation looks at how the emergence of AI impacts content marketing.

AI can now produce content that most people can’t distinguish from human work — that’s not the problem. The problem is what happens when every company has access to the same tool producing the same quality: convergence. Research has found that while AI improved individual idea creativity, it reduced idea diversity in 37 out of 45 comparisons. IDC predicts that by 2027, 57% of campaigns will see declining engagement from AI-driven content homogeneity.

Presenting in the Marketing track at IDC Directions 2026, Senior Research Director Jordan Jewell examines why the real threat to content marketing isn’t AI quality but AI sameness, and why human creativity is becoming more valuable, not less. The presentation covers how AI is restructuring content discovery, production, and trust; why audiences reward human involvement rather than penalizing AI; and what the shift to AI-era content systems means for vendors and buyers. It closes with four actions for leaders preparing for a market where the winners won’t be the fastest producers but the ones who figure out what’s actually worth saying.