Corporate leaders question returns from heavy AI spending, research

Only 12% of respondents say AI has delivered both lower costs and higher revenues

A growing number of company bosses are questioning the business case for AI after a global survey found most have yet to see financial benefits from the technology.

The study, conducted by PwC, surveyed 4,454 business leaders across 95 countries and territories.

It found that 56% of CEOs reported seeing neither increased revenue nor reduced costs from their use of AI, despite what the firms described as "significant" levels of investment.

Only 12% of respondents said AI had delivered both lower costs and higher revenues.

A further 26% reported cost reductions alone, while almost as many said their costs had actually risen.

The findings appear to temper some of the more optimistic claims surrounding AI's transformative potential, though PwC cautioned that many organisations remain at an early stage.

"Clearly, we're in the early stages of the AI era," the report said.

Adoption levels remain relatively modest. Even in the most common use cases - including demand generation, customer support and product development - fewer than a quarter of companies said they were using AI extensively.

A separate PwC study last year found that just 14% of workers were using generative AI tools on a daily basis.

Despite the limited returns reported so far, PwC argued that many companies have not yet invested enough.

It said "isolated, tactical AI projects" were unlikely to produce measurable value, and that stronger results tended to come from enterprise-wide deployments aligned with broader business strategy.

Pilot projects are typically designed to be small and contained, allowing companies to test new ideas before committing to costly large-scale roll-outs.

Research suggests limited RoI for AI at this stage

Similar conclusions have been reached elsewhere.

A study published last year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the majority of corporate generative AI pilots failed to produce meaningful financial returns.

The report, produced by MIT's NADA initiative, said 95% of projects stalled at an early stage, with only 5% achieving rapid revenue growth.

More recently, analysts at Forrester warned that the global AI market could be heading for its first major correction.

Their research suggested that a quarter of enterprise AI investments planned for 2026 would be delayed until 2027, signalling a slowdown in deployment and a cooling of the AI boom.

Mohamed Kande, PwC Global Chairman, said: "2026 is shaping up as a decisive year for AI. A small group of companies are already turning AI into measurable financial returns, while many others are still struggling to move beyond pilots. That gap is starting to show up in confidence and competitiveness—and it will widen quickly for those that don’t act."

The PwC survey also highlights broader concerns among corporate leaders.

Confidence in near-term revenue growth has fallen sharply, with only 30% of CEOs saying they were very or extremely confident about growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% last year and a peak of 56% in 2022.

Almost a third of CEOs said tariffs were likely to reduce their company's profit margins over the coming year, while two-thirds reported experiencing stakeholder trust issues in at least one area of their operations.

At the same time, many firms are looking beyond their traditional industries for growth.

More than 40% of CEOs said their companies had begun competing in new sectors in the past five years, with technology emerging as the most popular target for expansion.