Gartner Survey Finds Only 13 Percent of Companies See Real Returns From AI
A Gartner survey of 2,002 CIOs shows that just 13 percent of companies are getting measurable business value from AI, while 51 percent expect the technology to raise operating costs. Yet 75 percent of CEOs plan to keep increasing technology budgets.
Only 13 percent of companies are seeing real business value from their investments in artificial intelligence, according to a Gartner survey of 2,002 chief information officers. The finding suggests that strategic enthusiasm for AI is running well ahead of measurable results in most organizations.
The survey also found that 51 percent of respondents expect AI to increase their operating costs. That figure complicates the widespread assumption that AI will deliver automatic efficiency gains, since a majority of technology leaders anticipate higher expenses rather than immediate savings.
Despite those sobering numbers, commitment to AI spending remains strong. Seventy-five percent of chief executives plan to keep raising their technology budgets, according to the survey. The gap between strategic conviction and demonstrated returns is the central tension the data reveals: companies are continuing to pour money into AI even as most of them cannot yet point to clear financial benefits.
The results point to a broader pattern in the current wave of corporate AI adoption. Many organizations have launched pilot projects and deployed tools across their operations, but relatively few have managed to translate those efforts into value that shows up on the balance sheet. The Gartner figures suggest that the challenge is not a lack of executive will or funding, but the difficulty of turning experimental deployments into reliable, cost-effective systems at scale.
For CIOs, the survey underscores the pressure to demonstrate returns on technology spending at a time when budgets are expanding rather than contracting. If AI raises operating costs for roughly half of companies while delivering real value for only about one in eight, technology leaders may face harder questions about how they measure success and where they concentrate their investments.
The findings also carry implications beyond individual firms. As AI becomes a central item in corporate budgets, the gap between spending and results could shape how businesses evaluate the technology in the years ahead. The survey does not suggest that companies are pulling back, but it does indicate that the case for AI will increasingly rest on evidence of practical benefit rather than on expectations alone.
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