The financial stakes of extended service disruption has made operational resilience a top priority, according to 2026 State of AI-First Operations Report, a report from PagerDuty.
According to survey findings, 95% of respondents believe their leadership understands the competitive advantage that can be gained from reducing incidents and speeding recovery.
The report also shows that organizations are increasingly considering the adoption of AI for digital operations, with 59% indicating they actively incorporate the technology into operations. The AI adopters appear to be experiencing more success than those who may have discussed it but have not yet incorporated it: 75% report improved operational resilience, compared to only 66% of organizations that improved operational resilience but are not yet using AI.
Additional key takeaways from the report include:
Disruptions have become a board-level financial risk
Some organizations (8%) lose more than $1 million per hour, 34% lose at least $500,000 per hour, and more than two thirds (68%) lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents. The cost of disruptions have grown too high for leaders to ignore and the impact extends beyond immediate revenue loss to damaging brand reputation (52%), introducing recovery costs (50%), reducing productivity (48%) and contributing to developer burnout (42%).
Successful organizations prioritize investments in operational resilience
A majority of organizations have made strides from their investments in the past year, with 71% reporting higher resilience and maturity than a year ago. However, progress appears to vary based on two key factors: business performance and investment. While 77% of organizations plan to increase operational resilience budgets over the next 12 months, companies reporting revenue growth are investing at significantly higher rates (82%) than underperformers (62%).
Post-incident learning capabilities gain recognition
Organizations that reported improved resilience most often attributed this progress to tools that combine integration with learning capabilities. Nearly half of organizations (48%) have increased resilience by turning incidents into structured learning opportunities to improve future performance. Successful companies with revenue growth are more likely to see a massive or moderate need for continuous learning (83%) than companies with flat or decreased revenue (77%). This suggests that the most successful platforms will be those that can transform incidents into systematic improvement cycles.
"The 2026 PagerDuty State of AI-First Operations Report further demonstrates how the financial risk of major incidents makes operational resilience a board-level priority," said Katherine Calvert, chief marketing officer at PagerDuty. "AI-first operations enable organizations to accelerate their incident management workflows so they can restore service more quickly during disruption. With PagerDuty, organizations can not only minimize risk, but cut down on teams’ time spent firefighting so they can focus on driving innovation and revenue."
Methodology: The report draws insights based on survey responses from 1,000 business leaders, IT decision makers and senior developers across Australia and New Zealand, France, Germany, Japan, the Nordic countries, the UK and Ireland, and the US.