Dive Transient:
- Chief executives are optimistic in regards to the potential of synthetic intelligence, with virtually two-thirds now worrying they’re underinvesting within the know-how, in accordance with Cisco’s survey of 2,500 CEOs throughout 23 international locations.
- Infrastructure modernization ranks as CEOs’ prime know-how precedence for 2026, whereas fragmented information and AI safety stay key obstacles of deployment.
- Regardless of prioritizing AI agent deployment, 72% of CEOs anticipate people to retain oversight of AI techniques by means of 2030.
Dive Perception:
Cisco’s analysis discovered 69% of CEOs view AI adoption as important to remaining aggressive, but greater than half imagine their current infrastructure might restrict AI initiatives.
That concern is having an impact on government priorities, with 40% of CEOs rating infrastructure modernization as their prime enterprise precedence for 2026, adopted by upskilling groups to deal with AI workloads, deploying AI brokers alongside staff, measuring AI’s enterprise affect and strengthening governance.
For CIOs, the findings point out that AI implementation is turning into much less about experimenting with fashions and extra about modernizing the enterprise foundations that help them.
Cisco’s 2025 AI Readiness Index, which printed in October, surveyed greater than 8,000 IT leaders globally and advised many organizations nonetheless have important work to do.
Fewer than one-quarter stated their networks are absolutely optimized for AI workloads, whereas solely 19% stated enterprise in-house information is absolutely centralized and accessible for AI purposes.
Taken collectively, the findings counsel infrastructure, safety and information administration have develop into the first bottlenecks to AI deployment. With out addressing these points, organizations might battle to generate returns from rising AI investments.
CEO understanding of AI has, nevertheless, elevated, with fewer than half of these surveyed saying a lack of awareness hindered boardroom discussions, down from 74% final 12 months.
Equally, the proportion who stated it prevented knowledgeable decision-making dropped from 74% to 49%.
As AI consciousness improves, government conversations seem like shifting from what to deploy to how organizations can deploy AI responsibly and at scale.
That emphasis can be mirrored in chief executives’ views on governance. Whereas AI brokers are anticipated to tackle a bigger position throughout enterprise operations, virtually three-fourths of CEOs stated they anticipate people to retain oversight of AI techniques by means of 2030.
