10/30/2026
More than half of the world's CEOs say AI hasn't made their company a single extra dollar or saved them one either.
PwC surveyed 4,454 of them across 95 countries, and 56% reported no significant financial benefit from AI so far.
Only 30% saw revenue go up because of it. 26% saw costs come down. Just 12% got both.
And their confidence is sinking. Only 30% of CEOs feel strongly about growing revenue over the next year, the lowest in five years.
Most of them are still spending more anyway, because nobody wants to be the CEO who sat out the next internet.
That's the part that reminds me of the late '90s. Plenty of companies poured money into the web and lost it. The ones that won figured out a specific problem the technology solved, and they let the rest pay for the experiment.
AI saves me hours every week in my business, because I use it for specific jobs I already know how to do.
The CEOs getting nothing bought the tool first and went looking for the problem later.
For investors, I'd keep that in mind before chasing every company with "AI" in its earnings call. The money tends to end up with the few businesses that can show the results.
