Corporate willingness to invest in artificial intelligence remains remarkably resilient despite broader economic uncertainties. According to a survey released by advisory firm Gartner at its IT Symposium/Xpo, 75 percent of surveyed CEOs plan to increase their spending on technology and artificial intelligence. For 80 percent of executives, technology no longer merely serves an operational support role, but actively defines overall business strategy. Even so, the survey of 203 global CEOs and senior leaders exposes a stark divide between strategic ambition and commercial reality.
Exactly 44 percent of chief executives surveyed by Gartner report that they struggle to demonstrate tangible financial returns on their AI investments to boards and stakeholders. Gartner analyst David Furlonger emphasizes that value realization is not failing because of the tools themselves. Instead, meaningful gains demand a comprehensive redesign of business processes, because simply grafting advanced software onto legacy workflows yields little measurable return. Consequently, uncritical experimentation is giving way to intense boardroom scrutiny.
This dynamic is reinforced by HTEC's global AI Value Realization Report 2026, which surveyed 1,500 senior executives. The study reveals that 79 percent of enterprises raised their AI budgets over the past year, with investment volumes growing by an average of 31 percent. At the same time, 77 percent of C-suite leaders observe that productivity gains are hindered more by workforce deficits, lack of skills, and rigid internal processes than by technological constraints. The real bottlenecks have shifted firmly into governance, operational models, and change management.
While multinational corporations navigate these internal restructuring hurdles, small and medium enterprises display a different type of resistance. A survey by Germany's Institute for Employment Research found that during the second half of 2025, approximately two thirds of German enterprises avoided AI tools entirely. The primary explanation given by non-users is striking: 88 percent stated they saw no suitable use cases within their day-to-day operations. Even in sectors with analytically high automation potential, 85 percent of non-users cited an absence of recognizable applications.
Beyond a lack of practical imagination, limited methodological expertise and opaque cost structures further stifle adoption, each cited by roughly one third of businesses surveyed by the IAB. Among active adopters, a notable gap persists: where automation potential is highest, adoption reaches 41 percent, compared to just 13 percent in low-potential environments. Together, these reports indicate that the enterprise landscape has reached a critical juncture: technological viability is largely proven, but organizational maturity and practical workflow integration lag behind capital commitments.