McKinsey's 2026 Global Survey on the State of AI, published August 25, 2026, found that 37% of respondents attribute at least some earnings impact to their organization's AI use, a share that has barely moved since last year despite a wave of new deployments. The survey drew 1,719 respondents across 97 countries between May and June 2026.

Revenue gains from AI were most often reported in marketing and sales, followed by product and service development and software engineering, the survey found. Cost reductions clustered in a different set of functions, led by supply chain management, service operations, and manufacturing. Just 6% of respondents qualify as AI high performers, meaning they attribute an earnings impact of 5% or more to AI and describe the technology's value as significant, a share unchanged from 2025.

Spending has continued to climb even where returns lag. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said their organization now spends more than 10% of its total technology budget on AI, and 60% expect their AI investment to increase over the next year. High performing organizations invest well beyond that baseline, with more than half planning to raise AI spending by 10% or more in the coming year, compared with 36% of other respondents.

Rising spend has started to bump against operating costs. About one in five respondents said token and infrastructure costs have constrained their organization's AI use, a concern that cuts across company size and industry. McKinsey's separate research on enterprise AI budgets found that 93% of organizations now exceed what they had planned to spend on AI, a gap tied to fragmented purchasing and limited visibility into consumption across business units.

Source: McKinsey & Company - https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai