Worldwide artificial intelligence spending is projected at $2.59 trillion for 2026, a 47 percent increase over 2025. Enterprise budgets allocated to AI have roughly doubled as a share of revenue, moving from 0.8 percent to 1.7 percent on average.

Returns have not tracked the spending curve. McKinsey's State of AI survey found that 39 percent of respondents attribute any measurable EBIT impact to AI, and among that group most report the contribution at less than 5 percent of organizational EBIT.

The high-performer cohort is small. Just 109 organizations, representing 5.5 percent of respondents, report AI accounting for more than 5 percent of enterprise EBIT. Spending level alone does not predict membership in that group, with 61 percent of heavy spenders showing no high-performer characteristics.

The distribution points to an execution variable operating independently of budget size. Organizations spending at the top of the range are as likely to sit in the low-return group as elsewhere, which suggests the constraint lies in deployment depth and workflow redesign rather than tooling investment.

The gap between $2.59 trillion in spending and a 5.5 percent high-performer rate defines the central tension in the current AI market.

Source: CX Today - https://www.cxtoday.com/ai-automation-in-cx/mckinseys-state-of-ai-the-scaling-gap-is-now-cxs-problem/