New data shows AI-first tools are accelerating employee-led software adoption and governance risk.<\/p>\n
Torii, the leading SaaS management and governance platform, today released its annual\u00a0SaaS Benchmark Report, revealing that AI is accelerating SaaS sprawl and governance risk at a time when many predict enterprise software is in decline. Based on anonymized application usage, access, and adoption data, the report finds that the average enterprise now runs more than 830 applications, with over 61% operating outside formal IT oversight. Rather than consolidating tools, AI-driven experimentation is expanding the long tail of unmanaged software, deepening identity risk, access sprawl, and security blind spots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a growing narrative that AI will replace traditional software,\u201d said Uri Haramati, co-founder and CEO of Torii. \u201cWhat our data actually shows is the opposite: AI is accelerating software adoption across the enterprise. Employees are bringing in more tools, faster than governance models were ever designed to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compared to\u00a0Torii\u2019s 2025 SaaS Benchmark Report, new data shows that enterprise SaaS sprawl is not slowing down \u2013 it\u2019s accelerating. Organizations are running more applications year over year, with a growing share operating outside formal IT oversight. What\u2019s changed is the driver: AI-first tools have moved from experimentation to becoming the dominant source of individual software use. As employees increasingly adopt tools independently of centralized procurement, SaaS environments are expanding faster than governance models can keep up.<\/p>\n
AI is fueling a new wave of shadow ITWhile shadow IT has long been a known issue, Torii\u2019s data shows that AI-native tools are now among the fastest-growing sources of unmanaged access. More than half of the most widely adopted shadow applications discovered in enterprise environments are AI-first tools, many of which rely on OAuth-based permissions and instant integrations that connect directly to corporate data.<\/p>\n
Unlike traditional SaaS adoption, these tools often bypass procurement, security reviews, and identity controls entirely, indicating shadow AI as a higher-velocity, higher-risk evolution of shadow IT.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI didn\u2019t create shadow IT, but it dramatically increased its speed and blast radius,\u201d Haramati said. \u201cThese tools connect deeply, gain broad access instantly, and often persist long after teams stop using them.\u201d<\/p>\n
SaaS sprawl is bigger and more fragmented than most thinkTorii\u2019s analysis reveals that application growth is significantly larger and more fragmented than organizations think.<\/p>\n
The average organization runs approximately 830 applications, while the median is 680, highlighting extreme skew at scale.<\/p>\n
Large enterprises average 2,191 applications.<\/p>\n
The average employee interacts with 40 applications.<\/p>\n
61.3% of all discovered applications qualify as Shadow IT.<\/p>\n
Only 15.5% of applications are formally sanctioned. The remainder exist in intermediate states such as \u201cblocked,\u201d \u201cin review,\u201d or \u201cunknown.\u201d<\/p>\n
SaaS governance breaks down at the individual levelSaaS sprawl is no longer just an organizational metric, but an employee-level reality. With each employee interacting with an average of 40 applications, access management, lifecycle controls, and offboarding processes have become exponentially more complex.<\/p>\n
This fragmentation increases risk as employees change roles, adopt new tools, or leave organizations. The result is a SaaS landscape littered with inactive accounts, unused licences, and lingering access.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoftware adoption no longer follows centralized or predictable paths,\u201d said Uri Nativ, co-founder and CPO of Torii. \u201cOur data shows that governance gaps aren\u2019t the result of missing policies, but of speed. Applications, especially AI tools, are being adopted faster than traditional procurement and identity controls were designed to handle. Organizations need governance models built for continuous discovery, not annual reviews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torii\u2019s report methodology subverts traditional benchmarks that rely on contracts or SSO integrations, capturing real-world usage across browser activity, OAuth-connected apps, direct sign-ups, and AI-native tools and providing a more complete picture of enterprise SaaS adoption.<\/p>\n
The full 2026 Torii SaaS Benchmark Report is available\u00a0here, with additional findings on AI adoption, discovery sources, and governance trends across company sizes and industries.The post Torii 2026: AI Expands Shadow IT, Not SaaS Cuts first appeared on AI-Tech Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New data shows AI-first tools are accelerating employee-led software adoption and governance risk. Torii, the leading SaaS management and governance platform, today released its annual\u00a0SaaS Benchmark Report, revealing that AI is accelerating SaaS sprawl and governance risk at a time when many predict enterprise software is in decline. Based on…<\/p>\n
The post Torii 2026: AI Expands Shadow IT, Not SaaS Cuts<\/a> first appeared on AI-Tech Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-ai-and-ml","tag-ai"],"yoast_head":"\n