In a shift from AI hype to AI realism, organizations are increasing their AI investments with a focus on long-term value

Mumbai, Jan 16: New research shows that after an era of ‘AI hype’,  business leaders are now increasingly realistic and pragmatic about their AI strategies, and have started using it in their decision-making. The Capgemini Research Institute publishes today a report on AI perspectives, The multi-year AI advantage: Building the enterprise of tomorrow, along with a spotlight report on AI and decision-making, How AI is quietly reshaping executive decisions. As organizations enter 2026, the research suggests that organizations and their leaders will need to be more deliberate about governance, skills, accountability and human-AI chemistry to realize the full transformative value of AI.

As AI adoption is growing, businesses are accelerating AI investments for competitiveness and long-term value creation

According to  The multi-year AI advantage: Building the enterprise of tomorrow, which surveyed 1,505 executives at large organizations globally, 38% of organizations already operationalize generative AI use cases, while six in ten organizations are now exploring agentic AI applications. Nearly half of Chinese organizations are piloting or deploying agentic AI, ahead of US and European ones. Two thirds of business leaders believe that if they fail to scale AI as rapidly as their competitors, they risk missing strategic opportunities and losing their competitive edge.

Meanwhile, the way organizations measure AI success is evolving. Operational efficency and cost reduction are no longer the sole benchmarks: new measures of ROI include revenue growth, risk management and compliance, knowledge management and customer experience and personalization. Business leaders globally are more mindful than ever of the need to maintain control over their critical assets. More than half of organizations now prioritize data sovereignty, ensuring that sensitive or regulated data remains under their control.

Looking ahead, organizations are planning to accelerate AI investments, prioritizing functions with well-defined processes and measurable outcomes, and signaling a shift from experimentation towards long-term value creation. Nearly two thirds say they have started pausing lower-value AI projects to redirect their efforts toward high-impact areas. On average, they expect to allocate 5% of their annual business budget[1] to AI initiatives in 2026, up from 3% in 2025, and aim to focus on infrastructure, data, governance, and workforce upskilling, laying a strong foundation for AI adoption and impact.

“We have now entered a new, more pragmatic and realistic era of AI-driven transformation, focused on longer-term, enterprise-wide implementations, to improve not just productivity , but revenue, customer experience, risk management, innovation, or decision-making,” says Pascal Brier, Chief Innovation Officer at Capgemini and Member of the Group Executive Committee. “AI has now crossed a critical threshold: the question is no longer whether to pursue AI, but how to embed it into the fabric of the enterprise. As we enter 2026, many organizations are rightly prioritizing strong AI foundations – data, governance, and human-AI chemistry – but one other area stands out as a critical factor in successful AI deployments – leadership readiness. AI use is also now informing strategic decision-making. How leaders set a clear vision for its use across the enterprise and take responsibility for it will be key to effectively harness its transformative power.”

AI is reshaping decision-making

In addition, a spotlight report on decision-making, How AI is quietly reshaping executive decisions, surveyed 500 CXOs including 100 CEOs. It finds that more than half of CXOs are using AI to support or inform their strategic decision-making today, either “actively” – a trend expected to more than double within the next three years – or “selectively”, with close to another third currently “experimenting” with it. If these CXOs are currently mostly using AI to help with emails, meeting notes and documents, and research and analysis, in 3 years they expect to use it primarily to augment and challenge strategic thinking.

Early adoption is already delivering value. More than half of CXOs report reduced time and cost to make decisions, and improvements in creativity and foresight through the use of AI. At the same time, leaders are clear that AI remains an input rather than a replacement for human judgment. Just 1% of CXOs believe AI could autonomously make certain strategic decisions in the next one to three years.

CEOs, CFOs and COOs are also mindful of the ramifications of AI-driven decision making. Just 41% of them report an above-average level of trust in AI for executive decision-making, with the main concerns for all CXOs being legal and security risks as well as difficulty to explain AI-influenced decisions. In addition, many senior leaders remain reluctant to discuss their own use of AI publicly. Only 11% of CXOs say they currently highlight or plan to highlight the use of AI in business decisions. Those who prefer not to disclose AI use cite concerns about reputational risk if AI-influenced decisions go wrong and uncertainty around how clients, partners and the public perceive AI use.

Methodology of the reports

For The multi-year AI advantage: Building the enterprise of tomorrow report, 1,505 executives at organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue across 15 industries in North America, Europe, APAC, and Latin America were surveyed. All these organizations have already deployed AI at limited or full scale and executives surveyed were director-level and above. The survey was conducted in November 2025.

For the How AI is quietly reshaping executive decisions report, the Capgemini Research Institute conducted a quantitative survey of 500 C-suite executives, including 100 CEOs. Executives surveyed were employed at organizations with annual revenue exceeding $10 billion, spanning 16 countries and 13 industries. The survey was conducted in August and September 2025. The survey findings were complemented with insights from in-depth interviews with 6 C-level executives.

Deloitte Report Highlights AI Scaling for Real Business Impact

AI comes of age: Deloitte’s 17th Annual Tech Trends report reveals how leading organizations are scaling AI for outcomes and impact

Mumbai, Jan 16: The technology landscape has fundamentally shifted, and with it comes a massive opportunity. AI is challenging boards, leaders and the workforce to rethink how they operate, compete and create value — and the organizations bold enough to rebuild rather than just enhance will define the next decade.

“We are seeing that most technology trends today are pivoting decisively toward AI, and the shift is no longer about experimentation or isolated use cases. What stands out in this year’s Deloitte Tech Trends report is how AI is becoming a catalyst for rethinking how organizations are designed, governed, and scaled end to end. For India, this moment is especially relevant. Our enterprises operate at unmatched scale and diversity, which makes incremental change insufficient. The real opportunity lies in rebuilding core processes, infrastructure, and talent models so human and digital capabilities can work together seamlessly. Organizations that take this systems-level view of AI will be better positioned to drive resilience, productivity, and long-term value in an increasingly complex environment,” said Deepa Seshadri, Partner and CIO Program Leader, Deloitte India.

Enterprises are also faced with a variety of challenges, including economic uncertainty, policy shifts, and more, making it more important than ever to invest in strategic, scalable and transformational innovation. However, the complexity of creating an interconnected organization can be daunting and knowing where to invest can be difficult to pinpoint.

Ultimately, the gap between experimentation and impact is where competitive advantage is won or lost. Those who bridge it now are better positioned to shape their industries.

“The pace of technology change can be overwhelming. Deloitte’s Tech Trends report aims to cut through hype to provide clarity and confidence about the business and mission impact expected over the next 18 to 24 months, with breadcrumbs to the real investments leaders can make today. While AI remains central, other advances — like human + machine dynamics, underlying infrastructure choices and the next wave of cyber — demand attention. Leaders can’t afford inertia; ‘Tech Trends’ highlights real ways to forge new futures across industries worldwide,” said Bill Briggs, chief technology officer, Deloitte.

Kelly Raskovich, Emerging Technology Leader and Tech Trends Executive Editor, Deloitte, further added,

“For 17 years, ‘Tech Trends’ has tracked emerging technologies poised to reshape business. This year is different. Innovation is compounding. Forces aren’t simply additive, but multiplicative. Better technology enables more applications. More applications generate more data. More data attracts more investment. More investment builds better infrastructure. Each improvement simultaneously accelerates all the others. We’re seeing the S-curves compress in real time, and the distance between emerging and mainstream is collapsing. That’s the reality technology leaders are navigating.”

The report identifies five interconnected forces reshaping enterprise technology. Each represents a shift from last year’s experimentation phase to this year’s scaling imperative:

AI-enabled robots: Intelligent robots enter human spaces as AI moves from screens to streets

As AI is integrated directly into physical forms, real world autonomous devices with unprecedented capability may soon navigate human spaces.  AI will likely transition robots from niche, pre-programmed, task-specific tools to adaptive systems that can actively observe, decide, act, learn and adapt in dynamic settings. Success requires collaboration between hardware providers, regulatory bodies, and enterprises to turn these systems into reimagined work, not just next-gen tools.

AI agents: To give an AI agent a performance review, you’ll have to rewrite the standards

Despite enthusiasm for AI agents that can autonomously make decisions and complete tasks, many organizations are hitting a wall: only 11% have successfully deployed these systems in production. The challenge isn’t technology, it’s that enterprises are trying to automate existing processes designed for humans rather than redesigning them for AI-first operations. Leading organizations are reimagining what work means, based on the recognition that AI agents and human workers have different skill sets. Leaders are already beginning to develop hybrid human-digital workforces and investing to shepherd the massive change as teams and orgs increasingly are a mix of human and machine. Getting this balance right requires not just investing in learning, culture and growth for the human workforce, but also setting the foundation for the HR equivalent for advanced agents, robots and more.

AI infrastructure: AI sparked an infrastructure reckoning, now enterprises must build something new

While AI processing costs have plummeted, some organizations are seeing massive monthly bills. The culprit? Usage is growing far faster than costs are falling, and systems are built on top of aging infrastructure made for a different world. Organizations are hitting a tipping point where cloud services become cost-prohibitive for high-volume workloads. Leading organizations are implementing three-tier hybrid architectures: cloud for elasticity, on-premises for consistency, and edge for immediacy. In some cases, purpose-built AI data centers can be deployed faster than existing infrastructure can be retrofitted.

IT operating model: From architecture to delivery, AI flips the script on modern tech operations

AI is rewiring the ways IT organizations operate. What started out as a tool in the hands of the IT function is now reshaping it, and the familiar incremental pace of change is a thing of the past. A tech operation driven by AI can be leaner, faster and more adaptive, but for that to happen, tech leaders will need to pave the way with refreshed approaches to organization and culture. Leading organizations are anchoring AI initiatives to measurable business outcomes, designing modular architectures for flexibility, and redefining talent strategies around human-machine collaboration. Done right, these teams are the lighthouse that guides enterprise-wide transformation.

AI’s cyber paradox: AI introduces new security vulnerabilities, but it’s at the core of a proactive approach to emerging risks

AI is completely changing enterprise cybersecurity: The same technology that can deliver competitive advantage and new business opportunities is also introducing new cyber vulnerabilities and widening attack surfaces. Shadow AI deployments, adversarial attacks, and intrinsic system weaknesses are expanding attack surfaces. But the opportunity is using AI defensively, including red teaming with AI agents, adversarial training, and automated threat detection operating at machine speed. By adopting an “AI for cyber” and “cyber for AI” approach with security blueprints at its core, cyber leaders can proactively address emerging risks and drive tangible business outcomes.

Signals: The future is calling: Beyond the five major trends, Deloitte’s report identifies eight emerging technology signals (or technology patterns) that forward-thinking leaders should monitor, including brain-inspired neuromorphic chips, edge AI applications, biometric authentication advances, how AI agents are reshaping privacy concerns, and generative engine optimization.

The 17th annual “Deloitte Tech Trends Report” tracks the important changes business and technology leaders can use to find opportunities for growth, innovation and market disruption