Artificial intelligence has moved from experimentation to obligation in corporate boardrooms, even as returns remain uneven and timelines stretch.
According to a new global study from Teneo, AI is now the only technology where CEOs plan to accelerate investment faster than last year, signaling its shift from an innovation budget line to a core competitive requirement.
The survey, which includes more than 350 public company CEOs and 400 institutional investors representing roughly $19 trillion in company and portfolio value, finds that 68% of CEOs expect to increase AI spending this year.
Confidence in AI’s strategic value is rising alongside that investment. More than 84% of CEOs and investors say AI is already meaningfully helping companies mitigate disruption and navigate uncertainty.
But beneath that optimism, the data shows a growing disconnect between expectations and reality.
More than half of investors now expect new AI initiatives to deliver returns within six months or less. Only 16% of large-cap CEOs believe that the timeline is realistic. Mid-cap CEOs are more aligned with investor expectations, reflecting greater flexibility and shorter implementation cycles.
Despite the spending surge, CEOs report that fewer than half of current AI projects are ROI-positive. The strongest gains so far are concentrated in internal efficiency, administrative automation and customer-facing workflows.
Marketing and customer service stand out as the most successful AI use cases today. By contrast, deployments in higher-risk and higher-complexity areas such as security, legal and human resources remain the most challenging and least mature.
Ryan Cox, global head of Artificial Intelligence at Teneo, says the divergence reflects where companies are in the AI adoption curve.
“The first wave of AI returns came from easy efficiency wins. The next wave is about rewiring core processes that inevitably have a longer, bumpier ROI curve.”
Cox warns that these next-phase applications carry more risk and require a fundamentally different approach.
“These use cases are higher risk and have greater potential impact. You don’t rush them to market; you treat them as strategic change programs with board-level oversight, not experiments.”
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