Those figures come from ICONIQ's just-published Q2 2026 survey of ~305 executives at software companies building AI products. It describes a shift alliance leaders should track.

The delivery layer is being rebuilt in-house

Forward-deployed engineers are not a launch-phase workaround anymore:

• 37% of AI companies have FDEs today

• 22% are actively hiring, another 14% plan to within 12 months

38% are explicitly treating FDEs as a revenue driver, and the role is expected to contribute to expansion, retention, and strategic account outcomes.

The compensation confirms it:

• 65% of FDEs carry variable pay, tied to retention (74%) and upsell or expansion revenue (76%)

• 24% say FDE customization deliberately informs the core product roadmap

FDEs work across customers of every size, with the heaviest involvement in mid-market and enterprise. Enterprise coverage runs from 23% of accounts in 2025 to a projected 34% in 2027.

Embedded engineers, comped on expansion, feeding the roadmap, concentrated in the largest accounts. That is a channel partner role, staffed internally.

Why it happened: the agents aren't finishing the job

Only 5% of teams say their internal AI agents rarely need a human.

The most common failure mode is workflow breakdown on multi-step tasks. Average productivity gain from agents is still relatively low: 20-27%.

Autonomy got sold ahead of reliability. Someone has to stand in that gap, and today it is an FDE on the vendor's payroll.

Most AI vendors are absorbing the cost

30% bundle FDE work into the subscription at no extra charge.

Another 25% bundle a baseline and bill the overflow.

Only 29% invoice it as a clean professional services fee.

They are buying adoption, not margin.

One Field CTO explained it well:

I haven't found an AI-powered way to drive customer adoption automatically. The humans who talk to customers are still the main channel, and they need constant education.

The go-to-market data shows the same thing

• Sales-led remains the largest GTM channel at 37%

• Product-led growth declined, 30% to 27%

• Hybrid climbed to 36%

Self-serve did not carry enterprise AI. Assisted selling did, and companies now run both at once.

Where this points for partners

AWS and Microsoft are spending billions to stand up FDE organizations of their own. AI vendors are doing the same, mostly funding it themselves, because adoption depends on it.

Those are services sitting on someone's P&L, in the exact place partners have operated for decades. Nobody has settled who pays for it yet, which is usually when a channel gets designed.

So, is the FDE wave replacing partner ecosystems, or is it the best partner-attach opportunity partners have been handed in years?
Source: report