McKinsey's State of AI research finds that 72 percent of enterprises had at least one AI workload in production as of the first quarter of 2026, up from 55 percent in 2024 and just 20 percent in 2020. Larger companies lead the way, with 83 percent of firms employing 5,000 or more people having deployed AI, compared with 42 percent of firms with 50 to 499 employees.

The financial picture is more mixed. McKinsey's survey reported an average return of 5.8 times on AI investment within 14 months of production deployment, but only 39 percent of organizations report measurable EBIT impact at the enterprise level. Just 6 percent of respondents qualify as AI high performers, attributing more than 5 percent of EBIT to their AI efforts.

Spending continues to rise even as returns remain uneven. Sixty-five percent of enterprises increased their AI budgets in 2026, with a median increase of 22 percent year over year, and the average enterprise reports saving $4.6 million annually from AI-driven process automation across three or more departments. The central challenge, McKinsey notes, is scaling. Nearly two-thirds of organizations have not yet begun to scale AI across the enterprise, leaving most of the projected value unrealized.

Source: McKinsey - https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-how-organizations-are-rewiring-to-capture-value