McKinsey's State of AI research for 2025 and 2026 documents a dramatic acceleration in generative AI adoption across enterprises. Approximately 72% of organizations now report using generative AI in at least one business function, up from 33% in 2024. Overall AI use across any business function reached 88% of survey respondents, with 38% of knowledge workers using generative AI tools daily, up from 11% in 2024.
Agentic AI adoption is emerging as the next frontier. McKinsey found that 23% of respondents report their organizations are scaling an agentic AI system somewhere in the enterprise, with an additional 39% experimenting with AI agents. Only 28% of enterprises describe their AI adoption as mature, with AI embedded across multiple business functions -- indicating that most organizations are still in the early-to-middle stages of deployment despite high adoption rates.
The economic signals are strong for organizations that have moved beyond experimentation. Organizations reporting AI at scale see a 5.8x average return on AI investment within 14 months of production deployment. Capital allocation to AI is rising, with 65% of enterprises increasing AI budgets in 2026, at a median increase of 22% year-over-year. McKinsey's 2026 State of AI Trust report also highlights the shift toward agentic AI as the defining challenge for governance and responsible deployment in the near term.