Knowledge 2026 Day 1 keynote: Welcome to agentic business

"The world's leading companies are moving from AI chaos to control," ServiceNow Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott announced in the opening keynote session of Knowledge 2026.

Speaking to 25,000 attendees in Las Vegas, McDermott explained that the world will face a labor shortage of 50 million workers by 2030. At the same time, however, billions of AI agents and robots are coming online, purpose-built to fill the gap. For the first time in history, the labor supply problem and the technology solution are arriving simultaneously. Welcome to agentic business.

"What we're seeing is bigger than AI, bigger than software," McDermott told the crowd. "The world of work is being remade."

Securing the agentic business

McDermott kicked off the event by walking through how ServiceNow helps prevent AI chaos with a platform that brings together AI, data, and workflows and provides the governance needed to secure the enterprise. AI Control Tower makes it possible and, thanks to a new conversation-first, AI-native user experience, it’s easier and more intuitive than ever.

Amit Zavery, ServiceNow president, chief product officer, and chief operating officer, put it this way when he took the stage: “Everyone asks what AI can do for your business, but are you thinking about what AI can do to your business?”

With Veza for identity management and Armis to provide visibility into every asset across IT, operational technology, internet of things, and critical infrastructure, ServiceNow provides the visibility and guardrails enterprises need to keep AI safe and effective.

FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam and Chief Digital and Information Officer Vishal Talwar joined to highlight the real-world impact an AI control tower can make. How do you make sure AI at scale can be trusted? “That, for us, is the most important question we have to answer,” Vishal said. “For us at FedEx, where our brand has been synonymous with trust for the last 50 years, there’s no margin for error.”

AI that thinks, workflows that act

Companies across industries and around the world are rapidly increasing their AI investments. Yet only 16% have integrated AI workflows across functions, according to the ServiceNow Enterprise AI Maturity Index 2026. Day 1 of Knowledge featured several announcements of products designed to address that gap.

Autonomous Workforce—launched earlier this year with an IT service desk specialist—is expanding to every major business function, announced Holly Briedis, senior vice president for global industries and solutions at ServiceNow.

New AI specialists for case management, security and risk, finance, HR, legal, and other areas are expected throughout 2026. AI specialists will slot into your existing teams, just like a new team member would.

A suite of autonomous customer relationship management (CRM) solutions—including Autonomous CRM for Sales, Autonomous CRM for Service, and Configure, Price, Quote—was also revealed from the keynote stage, as well as a variety of workflows tailored for a range of industries.

Meanwhile, Zavery unveiled ServiceNow Action Fabric, a new capability allowing any third-party AI agent, from Anthropic Claude to Microsoft Copilot, to securely trigger governed enterprise actions on ServiceNow.

“Execution is where enterprises win or lose,” Zavery said. “Data alone doesn’t run a business. Action does. That’s what we’ve been building for 22 years: a system of action that runs the enterprise.”

One AI front door for work

Bhavin Shah, senior vice president and general manager of Moveworks and AI at ServiceNow, thrilled the crowd by introducing ServiceNow Otto. It combines Moveworks and Now Assist into one AI experience that reaches across hundreds of systems, activates plugins and specialists, and executes work end to end, governed by policy and grounded in enterprise data.

“This isn’t a YOLO approach to AI. This is probabilistic thinking and deterministic workflows coming together to reason through problems and resolve real issues,” Shah said.

In a live demo using FedEx as an example, Otto generated a surge readiness brief for Mother's Day, identified a staffing gap, recommended seasonal hires, blocked calendar time, and set up interviews—without being asked twice. Rather than making recommendations, Otto actually did the work.

Elevate your ambitions

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang took the stage alongside McDermott and ServiceNow Vice Chairman Nick Tzitzon with enthusiasm for the partnership between NVIDIA and ServiceNow.

The two companies announced Project Arc, a new enterprise autonomous desktop agent secured by NVIDIA OpenShell and governed by ServiceNow AI Control Tower in which every action and every agent are sandboxed, auditable, and policy bound.

Huang also shared some words of wisdom for enterprise leaders charged with navigating this moment of profound change. It’s time to elevate your ambitions, he said. When considering the benefits AI can bring to your business, think bigger than productivity gains. Instead, consider how AI will free your people to take on bigger challenges. The result will be workforce transformation, Huang said.

To close, McDermott left attendees with an inspiring message, comparing this moment of transformation to humanity’s 20th-century ambition to explore the solar system.

“Sixty years ago,” said McDermott, “a president said we’re going to the moon. Now it’s your turn. Build something the world doesn't know it needs yet but once it has it, won't know how it lived without.”

Find out more about how ServiceNow can help you embrace agentic business.