This is a chart from the latest 2025 Wharton-GBK AI Adoption Report with 74% of companies reporting positive AI returns. However, the largest enterprises with revenues exceeding $2 billion show the most caution, with 25% saying it’s “too early to tell”. This hesitancy amongst the biggest spenders contrasts sharply with smaller firms who report quicker wins, suggesting that scale creates complexity that delays value realisation. The data shows AI’s impact isn’t uniform across business size and nimbler organisations are proving that sometimes less infrastructure means faster returns.
This new report represents the third annual comprehensive study tracking enterprise AI adoption across US businesses. Conducted by Wharton’s Human-AI Research initiative and GBK Collective, this survey of 800 senior decision-makers from companies with 1,000+ employees and $50 million+ revenue.
Several fascinating findings emerge from the report beyond the ROI patterns. Most notably, data analytics has overtaken meeting summarisation as the top use case, with 73% of organisations now using AI for data analysis compared to 70% for document and meeting summarisation.
60% of enterprises now have Chief AI Officers, with executive ownership rising 16 percentage points year-on-year. However, over half of these CAIO roles are additions to existing responsibilities rather than dedicated positions. Companies are also investing heavily in internal R&D, allocating 30% of AI technology budgets to custom solutions, suggesting a shift from off-the-shelf tools to bespoke capabilities.