CEOs Report No Financial Returns from AI Despite Massive Investment in Enterprise Tools

CEOs: AI Isn't Helping Us Make Money, But It's Required to Remain Relevant

Less than a third of CEOs polled in a recent PWC survey said their companies have generated additional revenue from AI, and only a quarter have realized cost savings from it. Most companies that reduced costs saw little increase in revenue, and for many, increased revenue from AI use also led to higher costs. The Global CEO Survey from PWC polled 4,454 CEOs from 95 countries and territories, with a particular focus on AI and its effects on business. Across all polled industries, only 30% of CEOs reported increased revenue from AI in recent months. That's a step up from the 5% of companies that reported benefits from AI in an October Boston Consulting Survey, but with close to a third of those companies also seeing increased costs, the impact may be limited. Over the past year, we've seen many companies enact large-scale layoffs, often under the cover of AI-driven efficiency savings. In the PWC survey, only 26% of companies reported cost savings from AI, while the majority said revenue decreased or remained unchanged. Only 12% of polled CEOs said their companies had both increased revenue and reduced costs through AI. This leaves 56% of all polled CEOs saying they have seen zero revenue growth or cost reduction from using AI. These companies are using AI in different ways, though. Around 22% are using it to increase demand for their products, while 20% have employed it as part of their customer service system. Intriguingly, 15% appear to be using it in the design space by leveraging it for "direction setting." That sounds like CEOs trying to replace themselves with AI, if anything. Despite the lackluster returns to date, around 69% of CEOs said generative AI will require most of their workforces to learn new skills over the next few years. However, less than half say they have a clear plan in place to enable this. The numbers paint a picture of CEOs looking to keep up with AI, mainly to remain relevant. If that isn't indicative of the global AI vibe among major companies, I don't know what is.

Deloitte sees enterprises adopting AI without revenue lift

Making money isn't everything ... at least not when it comes to AI. Research from professional services firm Deloitte shows that, for most companies, adopting AI tools hasn't helped the bottom line at all. But researchers still sing the technology's praises. According to Deloitte's "State of AI in the Enterprise" report [PDF], 74 percent of organizations want their AI initiatives to grow revenue, but only 20 percent have seen that happen. The consultancy's findings echo a recent PwC business leader survey that found only 12 percent of CEOs saw both lower costs and higher revenue as a result of AI investments. Deloitte's explanation of the current state of affairs is that money isn't everything. "[S]uccess with AI isn't just about boosting efficiency or even growing revenue," the report says. "It's about achieving strategic differentiation and a lasting competitive edge in the marketplace." Corporate AI investment hasn't been entirely futile. Among the 3,235 business and IT leaders from around the globe who participated in Deloitte's survey, 25 percent said AI is having a transformative effect on their organizations, up from 12 percent a year ago. Asked about what benefits AI is actually providing today, 66 percent said it's improving productivity and efficiency. How that works when only 20 percent report revenue growth is left unanswered. We note that a study published last year by non-profit METR found AI coding tools made developers less productive, despite expectations to the contrary. Even without a compelling financial reason, workforce access to AI tools is expanding. Under 60 percent of workers now have access to IT-sanctioned AI tools, up from 40 percent a year ago. But among these AI-enabled workers, fewer than 60 percent use their AI tools as part of their daily workflow. "This suggests that while access is widening, enterprise AI remains underutilized, and its productivity and innovation potential are still largely untapped," the report speculates. That said, more AI pilot projects look likely to move into production. Currently, 25 percent of organizations say they've shifted 40 percent or more of their AI experiments into live use. That number is expected to reach 54 percent of organizations within the next three to six months. The deployment of AI within companies appears likely to affect jobs as Deloitte sees it. "Within a year, more than a third of surveyed companies (36 percent) expect at least 10 percent of their jobs to be fully automated," the report says. "The majority of surveyed companies (82 percent) expect at least 10 percent of their jobs to be fully automated when looking out three years." This expectation, however, hasn't been accompanied by much organizational change. About 84 percent of respondents said they have not redesigned roles based on AI capabilities. The people filling those positions also remain unconvinced about AI technology. Among non-technical workers, just 13 percent are highly enthusiastic about AI and trying to use it, according to the report. While 55 percent are open to the technology, 21 percent would prefer to avoid it and four percent actively distrust it. Ultimately, companies committed to AI need to convince their employees that the technology has benefits beyond automating jobs away. "The organizations succeeding with AI aren't just investing in automation and algorithms, they're investing in their people," said Jim Rowan, US head of AI at Deloitte, in a statement. "As AI continues to spark new ways of working, this dual focus - advancing both the capabilities of their talent and AI tools - empowers teams to embrace reimagined business models and sets the foundation for competitive advantage." Another concern is "sovereign AI," meaning that companies control their AI software and data in accordance with local laws and regulations and aren't dependent on foreign vendors or infrastructure. Eighty-three percent of respondent companies say sovereign AI is at least moderately important to them, and 43 percent say it's very important or extremely important. With regard to agents - AI models given access to tools - usage is modest at the moment, but is expected to rise. Twenty-three percent of companies report using agents at least moderately today, and two years from now, that figure is projected to reach 74 percent. The slow uptake may prove beneficial because just 21 percent of companies report having a mature governance model in place for autonomous agents. Ali Sarrafi, CEO and co-founder of Kovant, an enterprise agent platform, told The Register in an interview that the problem with the way people use AI is that they see it as a form of fancy workflow automation. "There are studies out there to show that personal productivity is not actually going that far if you do that," he said. "People start using it. But as soon as they get bored by it, they go back to how they did things before." The big change, he said, where companies start to see revenue results, comes from giving AI agents a job as if they were a coworker and running those agents automatically. "We're working with this big large manufacturing company," Sarrafi explained. "They have about 7,000 suppliers. And every single time they needed to restock something, they had to coordinate with so many suppliers. It's actually the most boring job ever for everyone. But then they deploy this agent worker or a team of agent workers that basically monitors the stock levels. As soon as it goes below the forecast requirements level, it sends a preliminary email to the supplier saying, 'Can you tell us if you can supply this and what price?'" The result is a summary report sent to Microsoft Teams that a company planner has to review and approve. If allowed to do so, Sarrafi said, the agent then sends the purchase order and follows up with the supplier until the goods reach the warehouse. "So all that manual, annoying work, all of a sudden, it's actually saving about 95 percent of that," he said. With regard to Deloitte's report, he said the consultancy's emphasis on governance can be addressed in product design - designing AI workflows with care. "They make governance a big deal, but actually you need to have a nimble model of governance," he said. "It's the same way as when you hire people, you create governance around them. The information classification needs to be dealt with in the beginning. If you're actually just opening up the entire world into the agent, then of course, it's a statistical model - it might create problems. So it is more of a design problem in my mind than a need for massive governance architecture." Sarrafi also said that Deloitte's findings about worker AI hesitancy can be attributed in part to unwieldy enterprise tools. "Most of the enterprise AI tools that are built, applications that are built for employees, they actually are not on par with what they expect in terms of user experience," he said, adding that people don't want to switch between multiple tools. Successful implementations, he said, tend to allow people to interact with agents through familiar tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack. "I'm not going to name products," Sarrafi said, "but most of the enterprise AI tools right now are about a year or two behind the consumer ones in user experience." ®

AI hype meets reality as majority of CEOs report no financial returns

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Bottom line: Despite being advertised as the holy grail for businesses, embracing AI doesn't mean a company will automatically experience improvements. A new survey that questioned thousands of CEOs found that more than half admit to seeing no significant financial benefit from AI to date. Professional services network PwC's latest Global CEO survey was completed by 4,454 Chief Executive Officers across 95 countries and territories. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the questions are related to AI. Most companies have introduced the technology into their businesses to varying extents, but 56% of CEOs say it hasn't produced any cost or revenue benefits. Some CEOs said that AI had led to cost or revenue improvements: a third said they had seen increased revenue in the last 12 months, while 26% said they are seeing lower costs - but 22% said their costs had actually increased. What might concern those already worried about AI being a bubble is that just 12% of CEOs reported both these positive changes as a result of implementation. Rather than questioning whether AI is the golden ticket companies like OpenAI claim, PwC's narrative shifts the focus elsewhere: businesses with strong "AI foundations" - including responsible AI frameworks and technology environments that support enterprise-wide integration - are two to three times more likely to report meaningful financial returns, apparently. In fact, rather than worrying that AI might not live up to the hype, the biggest concern among CEOs is whether they are transforming fast enough to keep pace with technological change. That anxiety is backed up by some interesting numbers. According to PwC, 69% of CEOs believe generative AI will require most of their workforce to develop new skills within the next three years, yet fewer than half say their companies have a clear plan in place to reskill employees at scale. It appears many leaders are betting on AI-driven transformation while still figuring out how their people will keep up. Also, while a large majority of CEOs say AI will fundamentally change how their company creates value, only a minority describe their AI initiatives as fully integrated into core business processes. For many organizations, AI is still stuck in pilot projects, isolated tools, or productivity experiments rather than something that reshapes decision-making or operating models. PwC's data suggests that CEOs aren't losing faith in AI. Nearly three-quarters expect it to significantly boost profitability over the next 12 months, despite the fact that most haven't seen meaningful gains so far. That optimism may help explain why investment continues to accelerate even as results lag behind expectations. The survey paints a picture of a AI adoption being driven less by proven returns and more by fear of falling behind. CEOs aren't pulling back because AI doesn't work - they're doubling down because the cost of not transforming fast enough feels even riskier. Whether that confidence is justified, or simply another chapter in the long history of tech hype-driven FOMO, is something the next few years will make painfully clear.

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

PwC survey finds more than half of 4,500+ biz leaders see no revenue growth nor cost savings More than half of CEOs report seeing neither increased revenue nor decreased costs from AI, despite massive investments in the technology, according to a PwC survey of 4,454 business leaders. The findings pour more cold water on the hyperbole surrounding AI and the benefits it supposedly brings to business, although the report cautions that "clearly, we're in the early stages of the AI era." Only 12 percent reported both lower costs and higher revenue, while 56 percent saw neither benefit. Twenty-six percent saw reduced costs, but nearly as many experienced cost increases. AI adoption remains limited. Even in top use cases like demand generation (22 percent), support services (20 percent), and product development (19 percent), only a minority are deploying AI extensively. Last year, a separate PwC study found that only 14 percent of workers indicated they were using generative AI daily in their work. Despite the CEOs' repsonses, PwC concludes more investment is required. It claims that "isolated, tactical AI projects" often don't deliver measurable value, and that tangible returns instead come from enterprise-wide deployments consistent with business strategy. However, pilot projects are by their very nature typically small scale and isolated in order to demonstrate the viability of a concept before risking an enterprise-wide rollout. Is PwC advising clients not to worry if an AI pilot project fails, and push ahead with a large-scale deployment anyway? The report then goes on to explain that scaling up demands "strong AI foundations," including a technology environment that enables AI integration; a clearly defined roadmap for AI initiatives; formalized risk processes; and "an organizational culture that enables AI adoption." So if your AI projects fail, you clearly just don't believe enough. This follows MIT research in August which found only 5 percent of enterprises have successfully implemented AI tools at scale, while the other 95 percent saw zero return from their AI efforts. A study out last week concluded that using an AI chatbot saved insurance agents just three minutes a day. In terms of the broader picture, PwC says it found CEO confidence has hit a five-year low, with only 30 percent optimistic about revenue growth (down from 38 percent last year). This points to growing geopolitical risk and intensifying cyber threats, as well as uncertainty over the benefits and downsides of AI. Unsurprisingly, concern remains over tariffs as the Trump administration continues its erratic approach to policy, with almost a third of company chiefs saying tariffs are expected to reduce their company's profit margin in the year ahead. In the US, 22 percent indicate their corporation is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs. PwC warns that companies avoiding major investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins. ®

CEOs want to spend more on AI - but they aren't seeing any big returns just yet

PwC calls for clearer goals and readiness to adapt as the landscape changes New research has claimed that while four in five (81%) CEOs are now prioritizing technology, AI and data investments, up from three in five (60%) in 2025, many are still not seeing the returns they'd hoped for. Barely one in 10 (9%) of UK organizations surveyed by PwC have successfully scaled AI - most others are still either in the early stages, or they're still planning. But the need for AI is clear - half (52%) see it as key to competitiveness as its utility goes beyond basic chatbot applications. PwC blames the gap on internal barriers and company challenges rather than defective AI for the most part, noting talent shortages in particular. Only one in four UK CEOs believe they can attract high-quality AI talent, which is far below the 42% global average - a proportion that's still lower than ideal. One-third of PwC's respondents said bureaucracy was preventing them from going forward with their strategies, and nearly as many (29%) cited tech constraints. However, while only 30% of UK CEOs have attributed revenue growth to AI, this is still notably higher than the 26% global average, suggesting Britain's businesses are doing something right even if they're less confident that current AI investments are sufficient compared with the global average. "Those with clear goals and the agility to adapt will shape the competitive landscape ahead," PwC CTO Umang Paw said. PwC also found nearly half (49%) of firms are actively building AI skills, infrastructure and governance, while others are focusing on data foundations, ethics, compliance and security. The report calls this a 'foundations first' approach. There's also appetite for next-generation technologies, with four in five (81%) exploring or developing agentic AI, which Paw sees as key: "As AI moves beyond 'chatbots' to being an active part of how business operate via agentic tools, we are already seeing greater value from organisations using AI as a catalyst for business-led transformation, rather than treating it as a technology project."