Published by the Capgemini Research Institute in 2026, this report argues that organizations are shifting from AI hype to AI realism, increasing their AI investment while focusing more deliberately on long-term value than on speed of deployment alone. Organizations expect to allocate about 5% of their annual business budget to AI initiatives in 2026, up from 3% in 2025, and 66% report measurable improvements in productivity and decision quality from human-AI collaboration.
The report pairs that enterprise-wide view with a companion study on executive decision-making, finding more than half of CXOs now use AI to actively or selectively support their strategic decisions, with close to another third still experimenting with it. Data and AI sovereignty ranks as a top concern, with 54% of organizations prioritizing control over their own data as they scale AI further into core operations.