Getting into into the fourth yr of AI hype, experimentation, and adoption, a brand new examine from Eden McCallum has consulted enterprise leaders about their perceived impacts of the expertise. Nearly all of executives to have sanctioned costly generative AI transformations counsel a optimistic impact, but promised booms in productiveness and revenue nonetheless appear a way off – with simply one-in-ten respondents noting modifications to revenue ensuing from their investments.
In late-2025, Eden McCallum surveyed 300 companies within the UK, the US and the Netherlands for their views and expertise of working with GenAI. In line with the researchers, the responses level to “elevated exercise and experimentation, and in addition stable confidence that the brand new expertise will generate vastly elevated worth within the years to return”.
Roughly a 3rd of respondents mentioned generative AI has already had “a major or very important impact on their enterprise”. Of these, round 60% say that this impact has been optimistic. On the identical time, the typical variety of ‘actions’ across the expertise has nearly doubled because the second quarter of 2023, as increasingly more companies weigh up their choices.
In 2023, 51% of respondents mentioned they had been exploring use circumstances, and that has now risen to 69% on the finish of 2025. In the meantime, the quantity actively experimenting with or planning use circumstances has grown from 49% to 67% over the identical interval. And greater than half of companies at the moment are utilizing the expertise to coach employees – up from simply 17% beforehand.
Nevertheless, given the quantity of money and time invested into AI instruments at this level, that may not be the glowing advice it initially seems. To have handed three years since OpenAI opened ChatGPT as much as the general public, kicking off the thrill round enterprise purposes of the expertise, and the most important purposes of it are nonetheless exploratory, relatively than scaled, company-wide options, or proprietary instruments and evaluation – rising from 14% to twenty-eight% – doesn’t appear to be delivering on the pace and productiveness the burgeoning AI market was bought on.
On the identical time, failing to reveal a major impact in two-thirds of the circumstances the place it’s deployed in all probability calls into query the ‘revolutionary’ billing of the expertise. It’s laborious to think about that through the unique industrial revolution, solely 57% of British manufacturing facility homeowners would have mentioned mechanised manufacturing was a ‘largely optimistic’ substitute of complicated and time-consuming guide labour, but the AI-age, which is so usually likened to that historic period, sees precisely that – whereas on the earth’s largest financial system of the US, that determine falls to simply 50%.
That’s not to say that the advantages of AI are negligible to everybody concerned. In relation to figuring out materials advantages of AI, 50% of leaders level to cost-reduction and effectivity financial savings because the main metric. In the meantime, 37% counsel their decision-making has been enhanced, and 32% argue their buyer expertise has been improved. In relation to securing their bottom-lines on the finish of a tough yr, that may nicely show essential – particularly when government bonuses are on the road. Nevertheless, relating to increasing their enterprise, to develop within the method many companies have to, to appease their shareholders, simply 10% mentioned AI had elevated revenue on their present enterprise mannequin. On the identical time, regardless of the allegedly limitless modern potential of the expertise, solely 12% mentioned it had opened up extra revenue streams.
Nonetheless, leaders are undeterred. Wanting forward, they advised Eden McCallum that they nonetheless anticipate the impact of generative AI to extend sharply. Within the coming three years, 79% consider it would have important impact – a stronger vote of confidence in AI’s future than was registered in an identical survey two years in the past. And by then, a major minority of 38% additionally anticipate to see elevated revenue by then.
Dena McCallum, co-founder of Eden McCallum, famous, “Whereas it has moved to the highest of the agenda, and a substantial amount of exercise is going down, precise impact thus far is considerably restricted. However the sense of potential is obvious. There isn’t a doubt this will probably be a game-changer on each effectivity and effectiveness throughout enterprise features and actions. Will probably be fascinating to see the place and the way generative AI could stage the enjoying discipline between small and enormous companies.”
What leaders assert in regards to the effectiveness of their investments in AI is perhaps greatest taken with a pinch of salt anyway. In addition to their curiosity in arguing to shareholders that they aren’t merely shovelling cash right into a bottomless-pit, a string of latest studies have steered that companies could also be overestimating the ranges of innovation they’re reaching; and that they could not have the mechanisms in place to measure the precise returns on funding precisely. Certainly, solely 15% of companies even trouble to quantify the monetary impact of knowledge and AI in kilos or {dollars} – greater than three years because the hype round AI kicked off an period of feverish funding within the expertise.
That gravy-train might not be limitless although, within the shadow of a now notorious MIT examine discovered fewer than one-in-ten companies investing in AI had loved a return on funding. To that finish, on the flip of the yr, PwC evaluation additional confirmed that 56% of CEOs now consider they’ve seen “no profit” from funnelling funds into expertise. So, because the financial image darkens, and companies start trying to reduce prices, leaders would possibly nicely want to supply greater than optimistic sentiment, when calling for but extra funds to plug AI instruments into their enterprise.
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