AI Adoption Outpaces Companies’ Reported Financial Gains

AI use has spread across businesses, but reported financial gains remain limited, highlighting the challenge of turning task-level productivity improvements into broader company results.

An August 2026 survey found that 89% of organizations regularly used AI in at least one business function. Thirty-seven percent of respondents attributed some positive impact on earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to AI, while 6% qualified as high performers by reporting significant impact and attributing at least 5% of EBIT to AI.

The survey included 1,719 respondents and ran from May 4-June 8, 2026. Its findings show a gap between regular use and reported financial impact, though the figures reflect survey responses.

Studies of customer support and software development found productivity gains in specific settings. AI assistance increased issues resolved per hour by an average of 15% in a study of 5,179 customer-support agents at one company. In three field experiments involving 4,867 software developers, those given an AI coding assistant completed an estimated 26.08% more tasks; results varied across the experiments.

The studies measured different tasks and groups of workers. They do not establish that comparable gains will transfer to other business processes.

A separate survey published in July found that 32% of leaders at organizations that redesigned workflows reported capturing enterprise value, compared with 6% of leaders at organizations that did not. The survey covered 750 employees and leaders, and the comparison drew on a subset of 582 leaders. The responses show an association between workflow redesign and reported value capture; they do not establish that redesign alone caused the difference.