Merck and Mastercard are seeing real agentic AI results. Both say the plumbing came first.

Merck is using AI agents to cut drug discovery cycles by a third and ship compliant marketing materials up to 80% faster — but VP of Digital Platforms Sean Finnerty says the only reason it's working is because they built the infrastructure first.And the pharmaceutical manufacturer is seeing promising early results: AI is generating marketing drafts that are “99% right” when it comes to compliance, shrinking review cycles from months to days and accelerating delivery by 70% to 80%. In the company’s medical research, meanwhile, one AI-assisted discovery cycle was reduced by 33%.Still, agentic AI only works if companies first build the underlying “plumbing,” Finnerty said of digital platforms and services at a recent AI Impact Series event. “If we do one-offs, we're gonna end up with thousand