Two out of every three software companies in Colombia already use artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily operations, while nearly one in three has adopted AI agents, according to a survey by Fedesoft, the federation of Colombian software and technology firms, and its research center, Cenisoft.
The survey, conducted between April and May with 104 companies, found that 66.3% use AI in real operations and another 21.2% are testing it in pilot projects. The most striking result concerns AI agents: 32.7% of the companies already use tools that can carry out tasks, make decisions and act with limited human supervision.
The sector calls these systems “digital employees.” Productivity drives much of this adoption, with 88.5% of respondents citing it as a primary motivation and 51% saying they use AI to grow without hiring more people. These findings point to a shift in how Colombian software firms organize their work and raise an important question: what tasks do these digital employees actually perform?
How Colombian software firms use AI agents
Colombian software firms are putting their digital employees to work first in areas they know best, with 74% using them to write and review code, the instructions that make programs run. They are also handing over tasks that once took hours of human effort, such as automating internal processes (52%), serving customers (50%), supporting sales (42%) and analyzing data (36%).
The results are already showing up in the numbers: 24% of the companies report productivity gains above 30%, and another 27% report moderate gains. However, about one-third have not measured the effect at all, suggesting that adoption is moving faster than companies’ ability to assess its impact. In practice, Colombian companies rely on major global platforms, with Google Cloud AI (24%), Microsoft Azure AI (21%) and Amazon Web Services (16%) leading the list.
Claude, the model from the company Anthropic, ranks fourth overall at 13.4%, yet it leads among developers who use AI to write code, with a preference rate of 60.6%. Looking ahead, 81% of the companies expect AI agents to become a high or very high priority over the next two years. The digital employee already working in nearly one-third of the sector could soon appear in many more Colombian industries, bringing the sector’s biggest obstacle into focus.
Why AI adoption in Colombia faces a skills gap
Companies in Colombia that have not yet made the leap say the main barrier is not money but know-how: 46% point to a lack of specialized talent, 40% to a poor understanding of what AI can do, 34% to the absence of a clear strategy and 33% to security risks.
This pattern fits a wider problem that Fedesoft has described for years. The organization estimates that Colombia needs about 83,000 technology professionals this year and faces a gap of more than 85,000 specialists. That gap helps explain why training, rather than investment alone, will determine how far Colombian firms can go with AI. Businesses want the tools but often lack the people who can guide their use.
The software industry has a lot at stake because it already represents 3.6% of Colombia’s economy, and Fedesoft says companies that build AI-based products grow eight to nine percentage points faster than others.
Meanwhile, the survey’s findings on hiring show another side of the story: AI does not replace jobs overnight, but it can change how many people a company needs to do a given amount of work. Colombia now has to determine whether its schools, companies and workers can train fast enough to grow alongside these new digital colleagues.