Most firms now use AI, but enterprise-wide scaling remains rare, meaning real productivity gains are still concentrated among a small group of larger firms. The AI race is shifting from adoption to execution: workflow redesign and operating-model change are now the bottleneck.
AI adoption is now firmly mainstream, with 88% of organisations reporting regular use in at least one business function in 2025, yet true enterprise-wide impact remains limited because scaling is still rare: only 7% report fully scaled deployment, while most remain stuck in experimentation (32%) or piloting (30%).
Where AI is most embedded, adoption is concentrated in knowledge-heavy and digital functions such as knowledge management (40%), marketing and sales (39%) and IT (34%). Usage remains far lower in operational domains such as supply chain (12%) and manufacturing (10%).
The data highlights a clear shift in the AI race from adoption to execution: competitive advantage is increasingly determined not by whether firms are using AI, but by whether they can redesign workflows, build operating-model capabilities, and scale AI across core business processes.
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