Beancounters at PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC] have been asking around and discovered that of 4,500 CEOs, more than half report no revenue growth or cost savings from their AI investments so far.
Of the 4,454 business leaders surveyed, only 12 per cent said they got both lower costs and higher revenue, while 56 per cent saw neither. Around 26 per cent saw reduced costs, but nearly as many experienced cost increases.
PwC’s numbers suggest AI use is still stuck in first gear. Even in headline areas like demand generation (22 per cent), support services (20 per cent), and product development (19 per cent), only a minority are deploying AI extensively.
PwC previously found that only 14 per cent of workers reported using generative AI daily in their jobs. Despite CEOs admitting the returns are thin, PwC still argues that more investment is needed, which is a bit convenient.
The firm claims that “isolated, tactical AI projects” often do not deliver measurable value. PwC says real returns come from enterprise-wide deployments that match business strategy, rather than random pilots that die in a slide deck.
PwC says CEO confidence has hit a five-year low, with only 30 per cent optimistic about revenue growth, down from 38 per cent last year. It points to geopolitical risk, intensifying cyber threats and uncertainty about AI’s upsides and downsides.
Tariffs are still spooking the corner office as the Trump administration continues its erratic policy approach, with almost a third expecting profit margins to take a hit in the year ahead. In the US, 22 per cent say their corporation is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs.
PwC warns that companies dodging big investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins, which makes “wait and see” look like an expensive hobby.
