6 ms·

56% of CEOs report zero financial return from AI in 2026 (PwC survey, n=4,454)

72 points by harran 7mo ago

harran 7mo ago
I've been building implementation guides for solo founders and small businesses trying to use AI practically, so I read the PwC CEO Survey closely when it dropped. The headline number (12% of CEOs generating measurable returns) gets cited a lot, but I think the more revealing finding is the 56% with zero financial impact. These are companies with enterprise AI budgets, dedicated teams, and access to every tool on the market and the majority are getting nothing back. PwC calls it "Pilot Purgatory." The pattern: AI gets deployed in isolated, tactical projects that don't connect to revenue. internal tooling, content drafts, meeting summaries while the 12% they call the "Vanguard" are using AI in the product and customer experience itself (44% of Vanguard vs 17% of everyone else). What I found interesting from a solo founder angle: the structural barriers causing large companies to fail at this “bureaucracy, legacy systems, misaligned incentives, multi-department approval processes” don't exist at the one-person scale. The bottleneck for small operators is different: it's not knowing which workflows are worth building, in what order, and what "system-level" vs "task-level" use actually means in practice. Curious if others have a take on why the enterprise failure rate is this high despite the investment, and whether the Vanguard pattern (AI into the product, not just the back office) matches what people are seeing in practice.
- andsoitis 7mo ago
  > The bottleneck for small operators is different: it's not knowing which workflows are worth building, in what order, and what "system-level" vs "task-level" use actually means in practice. Are you saying that from what you see, small operators also fail to get ROI, but for different reasons?
  - harran 7mo ago
    yes, but not at the same rate. and yes it's usually for different reasons. Enterprises usually struggle because of structure: approvals, incentives, legacy systems, fragmentation. Small operators usually struggle because they stay at the task level "prompt-by-prompt productivity boosts" instead of building workflow-level or system-level leverage.
- al_borland 7mo ago
  I work in a large enterprise. On one hand, we’re being told we should think of ways to use AI more. On the other hand, to even start (beyond just using Copilot to develop what I’m already working on), I need to have an idea and sell it to some AI board to get their blessing. At that point, I will have a microscope on me, tracking everything, to watch if this wild experiment is a success or failure. No thanks. If they really want me to try something new, they will give me the space to try things where I am free to fail quietly and privately, pivot, and continue trying things. Asking for ship dates on day one is no way to operate projects with so many unknown unknowns. No one wants to learn and fail with an audience.
  - harran 7mo ago
    That’s hard with AI, because early efforts are exploratory by nature. You don’t really know the shape of the value until you’ve iterated. If experimentation immediately becomes a public performance review, the safest move is not to experiment. I think this is a big part of why so many enterprise initiatives stall. The org says it wants discovery, but the governance model assumes delivery. Your point about needing space to fail quietly is important.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    That is kind of weird take, because whole my life, people WANTED to be part of initiatives like this and were jealous of people selected for initiatives like that.
    - bravetraveler 7mo ago
      Some people sit in front of the classroom because they want, others because they must. Many more choose elsewhere. Reasoning is their own. I don't find it strange, having routinely tanked my own chances/social credit for initiatives... because, like the parent, I don't want a target on my back. Somebody above thinks I do, though, apparently. Experience isn't conditioned on... that experience, if that makes sense. Unpleasant to say the least. Where you see jealousy, which is a strange thing to invite, I see fear of missing out/rat-racing. Pass. Plenty of motivators and opportunity without the charade. Or, to put it charitably, noise/competition/advertising. All to say, the initiatives are usually loaded with expectations, reasonable and not. Tread carefully.
- treetalker 7mo ago
  The following is my take on what's happening — outside the software-development domain, which is special vis-à-vis LLMs for obvious reasons. Given worker access to generative LLMs, plus training and motivation to use them, LLMs are effective for certain workflows. Those workflows tend to be personal, one-offs, or summarization in nature: write a bash script for this headache I have every day; tell me what colleague X is trying to say in his 1200-word email, since his writing is garbage and he can't get to the point; "what's the Excel formula syntax for this other thing that I keep forgetting?"; etc. So the time and mental-energy savings inures to the workers, mostly from coordination tasks that don't directly create core value. And then those savings aren't "reinvested" into value-producing activities whose benefits would inure to the firm because the workers have no incentive to do so; don't know how to create core value; don't have the skills to create core value; or aren't permitted to do those activities by higher-ups. Bottom line: LLMs are eating busywork coordination activities — hence no impact on most firms' bottom lines.
  - harran 7mo ago
    Exactly! this aligns with the "pilot purgatory" pattern. AI boosts productivity at the task level, but unless those savings are applied to workflows that directly drive revenue or strategic value, the firm sees little financial impact. It's a classic misalignment between individual efficiency and organizational ROI.
    - nlawalker 7mo ago
      > PwC calls it "Pilot Purgatory." The pattern: AI gets deployed in isolated, tactical projects that don't connect to revenue. I feel like both the name and the description miss the mark though - the use isn't in pilots or isolated projects, it's individual people using it to find stuff and read/write/code/work/make decisions for them, and none of that is going to drive strategic value until companies raise expectations on productivity to take advantage of it. It makes me think of a couple of bullet points from that "An AI CEO said something honest" post[1]: > - majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life > - they're not using AI to be 10x more effective they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042788
orionblastar 7mo ago
The average person is not ready for AI yet. Microsoft's Copilot has a low adoption rate. Data Centers have big energy bills and a lack of clients, and have no ROI for most of them.
- harran 7mo ago
  I think you’re pointing at something real. Adoption lag matters. If the end user doesn't change behavior, ROI won’t show up no matter how much infrastructure gets built. I’d add another layer though: expectations. Many CEOs implicitly treat AI like deterministic software. install it, flip the switch, get linear productivity gains. But these systems are probabilistic. They’re "slippery" Output quality varies, edge cases multiply, and oversight is required. That makes ROI non-linear.
- estimator7292 7mo ago
  Is the product bad or is literally everyone else wrong? Who can guess!
  - orionblastar 7mo ago
    The current generation of children uses AI on their smartphones. The average adult doesn't use or doesn't know how to use AI. In time, the children will grow up to get AI jobs, and the average adult will be a senior citizen.
    - autoexec 7mo ago
      If AI were actually capable of delivering on the promises driving the bubble, the next generation of children won't grow up to get jobs at all unless they're serving or cleaning up after trillionaires, or selling their bodies. Thankfully, there's basically zero chance of AI delivering on those promises. It'll continue to be useful sometimes, in some ways, to some people, but I'm less than optimistic that most people will be feel like what they've gained was worth what they lost and that includes most CEOs.
      - 7mo ago
atela 7mo ago
The question is whether legacy players can drive strategic growth that changes their trajectory to meet the AI-native disrupters. This is a data point.
- harran 7mo ago
  Exactly! having the budget isn't enough. Legacy players need to adapt processes and incentives to turn AI investment into real strategic advantage, or AI-native disruptors will outpace them.
  - add-sub-mul-div 7mo ago
    Are these AI-native disruptors in the room with us now?
    - harran 7mo ago
      AI-native disruptors are designing products and experiences around AI from inception, rapidly capturing value and reshaping customer expectations. In the near term, for some, that is a raising red flag.
      - jdlshore 7mo ago
        Who? The only “disrupters” I see are AI hypesters selling AI tools. Who are the people using these tools to create successful businesses and (non-AI) products?
        drakinosh 7mo ago
        Is this some umpteenth-level irony or are you simply missing the joke?
    - tonyedgecombe 7mo ago
      Their bots are.
- 7mo ago
atlgator 7mo ago
Buying a gym membership has never made anyone fit.
- harran 7mo ago
  True, but it's also more than just using the tool, it's also how it's applied.
ChrisArchitect 7mo ago
Related: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055979
hulitu 7mo ago
> 56% of CEOs report zero financial return from AI in 2026 (PwC survey, n=4,454) This is a lie. It can't be zero. It is negative.
- apercu 7mo ago
  It’s quite possible you are correct, but since gen-ai is good at generating stuff, it is taking on busy work, which might bring the ROI back to ~zero. In my business I suspect that gen ai has provided a modest productivity boost (single digit) but, due to other factors, I can’t quantify the revenue impact.
5o1ecist 7mo ago
[flagged]
fpaf 7mo ago
I'm not saying that CEOs (or devs, for that matter) lie. But on AI I don't think we can rely on any self-reported results, positive or negative, based on surveys. There is just too much incentive to say... no, to BELIEVE... both that AI yields 10x productivity that AI is useless. I am swinging wildly between the two too, personally. The more time I spend with AI, the more I am developing this split personality where one part of me says "I hope this thing blows up before I lose my job and my children never have the chance to have an office job again" and the other one says "AI is actually not easy! You have to know how to use it well, deveop tools, plan, curate your context... This means I am acquiring useful skills here, tring to port Flappy Bird to COBOL". And obviously, depending which side controls my cortex in that moment, I may err on the "AI is useless crap" or the "AI all the things!" side
- evolve2k 7mo ago
  I think an interesting analogy for what many of us are experiencing here is the phenomena of Doom Scrolling; deep down we know we should put it down (and go outside), but the immediate experience of it and the value it feels like it’s offering in the moment has you keep scrolling and scrolling. Similarly many have reported a sense of say programming productivity but a more objective reflection later on reveals the myriad issues with constantly and subtly heralding in large quantities of lower quality code and blowing past any caution or rigourkus discipline that would come with the laying down of lines of code “by hand”.
  - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    I don't know. I'm having coworkers resign due to AI mandates from upper management. Some of them are saying they are going to move on from the tech industry It's not just doom scrolling. AI is having a substantial negative impact on some people
    - eudamoniac 7mo ago
      I have also decided to do this as soon as the burden of lying about my AI usage becomes too onerous. Right now at Cisco, there are no mandates, only very strong recommendations with the explicit threat of being "left behind" if you fail to comply. Some teams have included AI usage in their personal KPIs which affect bonuses and promotions, but mine fortunately has not. Once the execs or my personal manager implement AI requirements, I'll have to start lying, which I really prefer not to do. If they start tracking, then I'll have to vibecode a script to make bullshit requests to the API each day. And if they start auditing, then I'll just check out (more than usual) and wait to be fired. They're only hurting themselves with this shit.
irenetusuq 7mo ago
[dead]
adrian-vega 7mo ago
[dead]

72 points by harran 7mo ago

I've been building implementation guides for solo founders and small businesses trying to use AI practically, so I read the PwC CEO Survey closely when it dropped. The headline number (12% of CEOs generating measurable returns) gets cited a lot, but I think the more revealing finding is the 56% with zero financial impact. These are companies with enterprise AI budgets, dedicated teams, and access to every tool on the market and the majority are getting nothing back. PwC calls it "Pilot Purgatory." The pattern: AI gets deployed in isolated, tactical projects that don't connect to revenue. internal tooling, content drafts, meeting summaries while the 12% they call the "Vanguard" are using AI in the product and customer experience itself (44% of Vanguard vs 17% of everyone else). What I found interesting from a solo founder angle: the structural barriers causing large companies to fail at this “bureaucracy, legacy systems, misaligned incentives, multi-department approval processes” don't exist at the one-person scale. The bottleneck for small operators is different: it's not knowing which workflows are worth building, in what order, and what "system-level" vs "task-level" use actually means in practice. Curious if others have a take on why the enterprise failure rate is this high despite the investment, and whether the Vanguard pattern (AI into the product, not just the back office) matches what people are seeing in practice.

andsoitis 7mo ago
> The bottleneck for small operators is different: it's not knowing which workflows are worth building, in what order, and what "system-level" vs "task-level" use actually means in practice. Are you saying that from what you see, small operators also fail to get ROI, but for different reasons?
- harran 7mo ago
  yes, but not at the same rate. and yes it's usually for different reasons. Enterprises usually struggle because of structure: approvals, incentives, legacy systems, fragmentation. Small operators usually struggle because they stay at the task level "prompt-by-prompt productivity boosts" instead of building workflow-level or system-level leverage.
al_borland 7mo ago
I work in a large enterprise. On one hand, we’re being told we should think of ways to use AI more. On the other hand, to even start (beyond just using Copilot to develop what I’m already working on), I need to have an idea and sell it to some AI board to get their blessing. At that point, I will have a microscope on me, tracking everything, to watch if this wild experiment is a success or failure. No thanks. If they really want me to try something new, they will give me the space to try things where I am free to fail quietly and privately, pivot, and continue trying things. Asking for ship dates on day one is no way to operate projects with so many unknown unknowns. No one wants to learn and fail with an audience.
- harran 7mo ago
  That’s hard with AI, because early efforts are exploratory by nature. You don’t really know the shape of the value until you’ve iterated. If experimentation immediately becomes a public performance review, the safest move is not to experiment. I think this is a big part of why so many enterprise initiatives stall. The org says it wants discovery, but the governance model assumes delivery. Your point about needing space to fail quietly is important.
- watwut 7mo ago
  That is kind of weird take, because whole my life, people WANTED to be part of initiatives like this and were jealous of people selected for initiatives like that.
  - bravetraveler 7mo ago
    Some people sit in front of the classroom because they want, others because they must. Many more choose elsewhere. Reasoning is their own. I don't find it strange, having routinely tanked my own chances/social credit for initiatives... because, like the parent, I don't want a target on my back. Somebody above thinks I do, though, apparently. Experience isn't conditioned on... that experience, if that makes sense. Unpleasant to say the least. Where you see jealousy, which is a strange thing to invite, I see fear of missing out/rat-racing. Pass. Plenty of motivators and opportunity without the charade. Or, to put it charitably, noise/competition/advertising. All to say, the initiatives are usually loaded with expectations, reasonable and not. Tread carefully.
treetalker 7mo ago
The following is my take on what's happening — outside the software-development domain, which is special vis-à-vis LLMs for obvious reasons. Given worker access to generative LLMs, plus training and motivation to use them, LLMs are effective for certain workflows. Those workflows tend to be personal, one-offs, or summarization in nature: write a bash script for this headache I have every day; tell me what colleague X is trying to say in his 1200-word email, since his writing is garbage and he can't get to the point; "what's the Excel formula syntax for this other thing that I keep forgetting?"; etc. So the time and mental-energy savings inures to the workers, mostly from coordination tasks that don't directly create core value. And then those savings aren't "reinvested" into value-producing activities whose benefits would inure to the firm because the workers have no incentive to do so; don't know how to create core value; don't have the skills to create core value; or aren't permitted to do those activities by higher-ups. Bottom line: LLMs are eating busywork coordination activities — hence no impact on most firms' bottom lines.
- harran 7mo ago
  Exactly! this aligns with the "pilot purgatory" pattern. AI boosts productivity at the task level, but unless those savings are applied to workflows that directly drive revenue or strategic value, the firm sees little financial impact. It's a classic misalignment between individual efficiency and organizational ROI.
  - nlawalker 7mo ago
    > PwC calls it "Pilot Purgatory." The pattern: AI gets deployed in isolated, tactical projects that don't connect to revenue. I feel like both the name and the description miss the mark though - the use isn't in pilots or isolated projects, it's individual people using it to find stuff and read/write/code/work/make decisions for them, and none of that is going to drive strategic value until companies raise expectations on productivity to take advantage of it. It makes me think of a couple of bullet points from that "An AI CEO said something honest" post[1]: > - majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life > - they're not using AI to be 10x more effective they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042788

orionblastar 7mo ago

The average person is not ready for AI yet. Microsoft's Copilot has a low adoption rate. Data Centers have big energy bills and a lack of clients, and have no ROI for most of them.

harran 7mo ago
I think you’re pointing at something real. Adoption lag matters. If the end user doesn't change behavior, ROI won’t show up no matter how much infrastructure gets built. I’d add another layer though: expectations. Many CEOs implicitly treat AI like deterministic software. install it, flip the switch, get linear productivity gains. But these systems are probabilistic. They’re "slippery" Output quality varies, edge cases multiply, and oversight is required. That makes ROI non-linear.
estimator7292 7mo ago
Is the product bad or is literally everyone else wrong? Who can guess!
- orionblastar 7mo ago
  The current generation of children uses AI on their smartphones. The average adult doesn't use or doesn't know how to use AI. In time, the children will grow up to get AI jobs, and the average adult will be a senior citizen.
  - autoexec 7mo ago
    If AI were actually capable of delivering on the promises driving the bubble, the next generation of children won't grow up to get jobs at all unless they're serving or cleaning up after trillionaires, or selling their bodies. Thankfully, there's basically zero chance of AI delivering on those promises. It'll continue to be useful sometimes, in some ways, to some people, but I'm less than optimistic that most people will be feel like what they've gained was worth what they lost and that includes most CEOs.
    - 7mo ago

atela 7mo ago

The question is whether legacy players can drive strategic growth that changes their trajectory to meet the AI-native disrupters. This is a data point.

harran 7mo ago
Exactly! having the budget isn't enough. Legacy players need to adapt processes and incentives to turn AI investment into real strategic advantage, or AI-native disruptors will outpace them.
- add-sub-mul-div 7mo ago
  Are these AI-native disruptors in the room with us now?
  - harran 7mo ago
    AI-native disruptors are designing products and experiences around AI from inception, rapidly capturing value and reshaping customer expectations. In the near term, for some, that is a raising red flag.
    - jdlshore 7mo ago
      Who? The only “disrupters” I see are AI hypesters selling AI tools. Who are the people using these tools to create successful businesses and (non-AI) products?
      - drakinosh 7mo ago
        Is this some umpteenth-level irony or are you simply missing the joke?
  - tonyedgecombe 7mo ago
    Their bots are.
7mo ago

atlgator 7mo ago

Buying a gym membership has never made anyone fit.

harran 7mo ago
True, but it's also more than just using the tool, it's also how it's applied.

ChrisArchitect 7mo ago

Related: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055979

hulitu 7mo ago

> 56% of CEOs report zero financial return from AI in 2026 (PwC survey, n=4,454) This is a lie. It can't be zero. It is negative.

apercu 7mo ago
It’s quite possible you are correct, but since gen-ai is good at generating stuff, it is taking on busy work, which might bring the ROI back to ~zero. In my business I suspect that gen ai has provided a modest productivity boost (single digit) but, due to other factors, I can’t quantify the revenue impact.

5o1ecist 7mo ago

[flagged]

fpaf 7mo ago

I'm not saying that CEOs (or devs, for that matter) lie. But on AI I don't think we can rely on any self-reported results, positive or negative, based on surveys. There is just too much incentive to say... no, to BELIEVE... both that AI yields 10x productivity that AI is useless. I am swinging wildly between the two too, personally. The more time I spend with AI, the more I am developing this split personality where one part of me says "I hope this thing blows up before I lose my job and my children never have the chance to have an office job again" and the other one says "AI is actually not easy! You have to know how to use it well, deveop tools, plan, curate your context... This means I am acquiring useful skills here, tring to port Flappy Bird to COBOL". And obviously, depending which side controls my cortex in that moment, I may err on the "AI is useless crap" or the "AI all the things!" side

evolve2k 7mo ago
I think an interesting analogy for what many of us are experiencing here is the phenomena of Doom Scrolling; deep down we know we should put it down (and go outside), but the immediate experience of it and the value it feels like it’s offering in the moment has you keep scrolling and scrolling. Similarly many have reported a sense of say programming productivity but a more objective reflection later on reveals the myriad issues with constantly and subtly heralding in large quantities of lower quality code and blowing past any caution or rigourkus discipline that would come with the laying down of lines of code “by hand”.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  I don't know. I'm having coworkers resign due to AI mandates from upper management. Some of them are saying they are going to move on from the tech industry It's not just doom scrolling. AI is having a substantial negative impact on some people
  - eudamoniac 7mo ago
    I have also decided to do this as soon as the burden of lying about my AI usage becomes too onerous. Right now at Cisco, there are no mandates, only very strong recommendations with the explicit threat of being "left behind" if you fail to comply. Some teams have included AI usage in their personal KPIs which affect bonuses and promotions, but mine fortunately has not. Once the execs or my personal manager implement AI requirements, I'll have to start lying, which I really prefer not to do. If they start tracking, then I'll have to vibecode a script to make bullshit requests to the API each day. And if they start auditing, then I'll just check out (more than usual) and wait to be fired. They're only hurting themselves with this shit.

irenetusuq 7mo ago

[dead]

adrian-vega 7mo ago

[dead]