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75% report positive ROI (and the VPs are much more "optimistic" than the middle managers who are closer to the work) - but how much ROI? 1%? The fact that they

75% report positive ROI (and the VPs are much more "optimistic" than the middle managers who are closer to the work) - but how much ROI? 1%? The fact that they don't quote a figure at all is pretty telling. And that's the ROI of the people buying the AI services, which are often heavily subsidized. If it costs a billion dollars to give a mid-sized company a 1% ROI, that doesn't sound sustainable. I would love to see another report that isn't a year old with actual ROI figures...

chatmasta 7mo ago
It’s not easy to quantify because you’re basically substituting or augmenting labor. How do you quantify an ROI on employees? You can look at profit of a project they’re hired to execute. But with AI, it’s mixed with the employees, so how do you distinguish the ROI of the two? With time, we might be able to make comparisons, but outside of very specific scenarios it’s difficult to quantify.
- lazide 7mo ago
  Everyone I’ve seen try has had negative actual ROI. All the middle managers are afraid to say anything though, so go go go.
keeda 6mo ago
Good questions! I have only skimmed through the report but slide 45 onwards of the full report has some vague numbers: https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-Wharton-GBK-AI-Adoption-Report_Full-Report.pdf https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... Can't say why they don't report exact numbers, but it may be because a) of confidentiality and b) RoI is very context dependent and c) there is a wide spectrum of RoI by different dimensions, including some 9% even reporting negative RoI. This may make it hard to cite a single number, but the majority report "moderate" to "significant" RoI, whatever that means to them. I'll add that I've seen mentions of similar reports from other sources like McKinsey and co. e.g. this one that claims actual revenue increase: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/gen-ais-roi https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/ge... -- I tend not to take these reports at face value, but I'm seeing multiple of them from various sources that tend to align. As an aside, I just wanted to say, these are the kinds of discussions I was hoping to see here!

chatmasta 7mo ago

It’s not easy to quantify because you’re basically substituting or augmenting labor. How do you quantify an ROI on employees? You can look at profit of a project they’re hired to execute. But with AI, it’s mixed with the employees, so how do you distinguish the ROI of the two? With time, we might be able to make comparisons, but outside of very specific scenarios it’s difficult to quantify.

lazide 7mo ago
Everyone I’ve seen try has had negative actual ROI. All the middle managers are afraid to say anything though, so go go go.

keeda 6mo ago

Good questions! I have only skimmed through the report but slide 45 onwards of the full report has some vague numbers: https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-Wharton-GBK-AI-Adoption-Report_Full-Report.pdf https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... Can't say why they don't report exact numbers, but it may be because a) of confidentiality and b) RoI is very context dependent and c) there is a wide spectrum of RoI by different dimensions, including some 9% even reporting negative RoI. This may make it hard to cite a single number, but the majority report "moderate" to "significant" RoI, whatever that means to them. I'll add that I've seen mentions of similar reports from other sources like McKinsey and co. e.g. this one that claims actual revenue increase: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/gen-ais-roi https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/ge... -- I tend not to take these reports at face value, but I'm seeing multiple of them from various sources that tend to align. As an aside, I just wanted to say, these are the kinds of discussions I was hoping to see here!