Deloitte: State of AI in the Enterprise 2026

Survey Overview Deloitte surveyed 3,235 organizational leaders across 24 countries between August-September 2025, including C-suite, board members, and directors split equally between IT and business leaders.

Primary Business Benefits Achieved

According to the research, organizations report these AI-driven gains: - Productivity & efficiency improvements: 66% of organizations - Better insights and decision-making: 53% - Cost reduction: 40% - Enhanced customer relationships: 38% - Innovation in products/services: 20% - Revenue growth: 20% (though 74% aspire to this outcome)

Transformation Depth Levels

The data reveals three adoption tiers: - Deep transformation (34%): Creating new products or reinventing core processes - Process redesign (30%): Rebuilding key workflows around AI - Surface-level use (37%): Minimal changes to existing operations

Workforce Challenges

The biggest barrier to AI integration is insufficient worker skills. Organizations are responding through: - Workforce AI education (53%) - Upskilling and reskilling programs (48%) - Specialized talent hiring (36%) - Career path redesign (33%)

Physical AI Adoption - 58% of companies already using Physical AI to some extent - Adoption projected to hit 80% within two years - Manufacturing, logistics and defence leading

Agentic AI - Gartner projects 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by end of 2026 - 74% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years - Only 1 in 5 companies has mature governance model for autonomous AI agents

Governance Priority

"Enterprises where senior leadership actively shapes AI governance achieve significantly greater business value" than those delegating technical oversight alone.

Human-AI collaboration is the emerging model rather than replacement strategies.