CEOs Embrace Generative AI

Learn more about IBM

Nearly half of CEOs surveyed identify productivity as their highest business priority — up from sixth place in 2022, according to CEO decision-making in the age of AI, Act with intention, a study conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value.

They recognize technology modernization is key to achieving their productivity goals, ranking it as second highest priority. Yet, CEOs can face key barriers as they race to modernize and adopt new technologies like generative AI.

The study found that three-quarters of CEO respondents believe that competitive advantage will depend on who has the most advanced generative AI. However, executives are also weighing potential risks or barriers of the technology such as bias, ethics and security. More than half (57%) of CEOs surveyed are concerned about data security and 48% worry about bias or data accuracy.

There is also a disconnect between CEOs and their teams when it comes to AI readiness. Half (50%) of CEOs surveyed report they are already integrating generative AI into products and services, and 43% say they are using generative AI to inform strategic decisions. Yet, just 29% of their executive teams agree they have the in-house expertise to adopt generative AI; only 30% of non-CEO senior executives surveyed say that their organization is ready to adopt generative AI responsibly.

"Generative AI can reduce the barriers to AI adoption and half of CEOs interviewed are actively exploring it to drive a new wave of productivity, efficiency and quality of service across industries," said Jesus Mantas, Global Managing Partner, IBM Consulting. "CEOs need to assess their company requirements around data privacy, intellectual property protection, security, algorithmic accountability and governance in order to plan their deployment of emerging use cases of generative AI at scale."

Additional findings include:

CEOs say productivity — and the driving technology — is a pressing priority

Almost half (48%) of CEOs surveyed pinpoint productivity as a top priority for their organization.

Technology modernization follows as their second highest priority (45%) but CEOs also indicate this is among their top challenges.

For the fourth consecutive year, CEOs surveyed say technology factors remain the top external force impacting their organization over the next three years.

CEOs increasingly look toward operational, technology and data leaders as strategic decision makers

When asked which C-Suite members will make the most crucial decisions over the next three years, CEO respondents identify COOs (62%) and CFOs (52%).

The influence of technology leaders on decision making is growing — 38% of surveyed CEOs point to CIOs (up from 19% a year ago), followed by Chief Technology or Chief Digital Officer (30%) as making the most crucial decisions in their organization.

CEOs are ready to adopt generative AI, but other executives have reservations

Three out of four (75%) CEOs surveyed believe the organization with the most advanced generative AI will have a competitive advantage.

Half (50%) of CEOs report they are already integrating generative AI into products and services; 43% say they are using generative AI to inform strategic decisions, with 36% using the technology for operational decisions.

While 69% of CEO respondents see broad benefits of generative AI across their organization, just 29% of their executive teams agree they have the in-house expertise to adopt generative AI.

Only 30% of non-CEO senior executives surveyed say that their organization is ready to adopt generative AI responsibly.

Generative AI is fueling workforce changes

About 43% of surveyed CEOs say they have reduced or redeployed their workforce due to generative AI, with an additional 28% indicating they plan to do so in the next 12 months.

At the same time, 46% of CEOs surveyed have hired additional workers because of generative AI, with 26% saying they have plans for more hiring ahead.

Yet fewer than one in three CEOs (28%) surveyed have assessed the potential impact of generative AI on their workforces, and 36% say they plan to do so in the next 12 months.

Methodology: The IBM Institute for Business Value, in cooperation with Oxford Economics, interviewed 3,000 CEOs from over 30 countries and 24 industries as part of the 28th edition of the IBM C-Suite Study series. The IBM Institute for Business Value also conducted a survey of 200 CEOs in the United States on their responses to generative AI.

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CEOs Embrace Generative AI

Learn more about IBM

Nearly half of CEOs surveyed identify productivity as their highest business priority — up from sixth place in 2022, according to CEO decision-making in the age of AI, Act with intention, a study conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value.

They recognize technology modernization is key to achieving their productivity goals, ranking it as second highest priority. Yet, CEOs can face key barriers as they race to modernize and adopt new technologies like generative AI.

The study found that three-quarters of CEO respondents believe that competitive advantage will depend on who has the most advanced generative AI. However, executives are also weighing potential risks or barriers of the technology such as bias, ethics and security. More than half (57%) of CEOs surveyed are concerned about data security and 48% worry about bias or data accuracy.

There is also a disconnect between CEOs and their teams when it comes to AI readiness. Half (50%) of CEOs surveyed report they are already integrating generative AI into products and services, and 43% say they are using generative AI to inform strategic decisions. Yet, just 29% of their executive teams agree they have the in-house expertise to adopt generative AI; only 30% of non-CEO senior executives surveyed say that their organization is ready to adopt generative AI responsibly.

"Generative AI can reduce the barriers to AI adoption and half of CEOs interviewed are actively exploring it to drive a new wave of productivity, efficiency and quality of service across industries," said Jesus Mantas, Global Managing Partner, IBM Consulting. "CEOs need to assess their company requirements around data privacy, intellectual property protection, security, algorithmic accountability and governance in order to plan their deployment of emerging use cases of generative AI at scale."

Additional findings include:

CEOs say productivity — and the driving technology — is a pressing priority

Almost half (48%) of CEOs surveyed pinpoint productivity as a top priority for their organization.

Technology modernization follows as their second highest priority (45%) but CEOs also indicate this is among their top challenges.

For the fourth consecutive year, CEOs surveyed say technology factors remain the top external force impacting their organization over the next three years.

CEOs increasingly look toward operational, technology and data leaders as strategic decision makers

When asked which C-Suite members will make the most crucial decisions over the next three years, CEO respondents identify COOs (62%) and CFOs (52%).

The influence of technology leaders on decision making is growing — 38% of surveyed CEOs point to CIOs (up from 19% a year ago), followed by Chief Technology or Chief Digital Officer (30%) as making the most crucial decisions in their organization.

CEOs are ready to adopt generative AI, but other executives have reservations

Three out of four (75%) CEOs surveyed believe the organization with the most advanced generative AI will have a competitive advantage.

Half (50%) of CEOs report they are already integrating generative AI into products and services; 43% say they are using generative AI to inform strategic decisions, with 36% using the technology for operational decisions.

While 69% of CEO respondents see broad benefits of generative AI across their organization, just 29% of their executive teams agree they have the in-house expertise to adopt generative AI.

Only 30% of non-CEO senior executives surveyed say that their organization is ready to adopt generative AI responsibly.

Generative AI is fueling workforce changes

About 43% of surveyed CEOs say they have reduced or redeployed their workforce due to generative AI, with an additional 28% indicating they plan to do so in the next 12 months.

At the same time, 46% of CEOs surveyed have hired additional workers because of generative AI, with 26% saying they have plans for more hiring ahead.

Yet fewer than one in three CEOs (28%) surveyed have assessed the potential impact of generative AI on their workforces, and 36% say they plan to do so in the next 12 months.

Methodology: The IBM Institute for Business Value, in cooperation with Oxford Economics, interviewed 3,000 CEOs from over 30 countries and 24 industries as part of the 28th edition of the IBM C-Suite Study series. The IBM Institute for Business Value also conducted a survey of 200 CEOs in the United States on their responses to generative AI.

Related Links

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Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

The Quiet Power of Milliseconds in High Traffic Systems

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

Are AI "Autonomous Coworkers" Ready for Payroll?

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI Reaches Pivotal Inflection Point: From Automation to Agentic Intelligence

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The Real Reason Enterprise AI Stalls: It Doesn't Fit in the Box

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

AI's Inflection Point Will Redefine Enterprise Readiness in 2026

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Turning Foresight into Resilience: Reclaiming Prevention in the Age of Exposure

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

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If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

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Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

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