PwC released the 29th edition of its Global CEO Survey in January 2026, timed to the World Economic Forum's Davos meeting, based on responses from 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries gathered the previous fall. The survey finds CEO confidence in revenue growth at a five-year low, with AI increasingly described as a "defining divide" between the minority of leaders who can already show financial returns from AI investment and the majority who cannot yet.
The survey's framing of AI returns as a competitive divide, rather than a uniform tide lifting all adopters, has made it a widely cited reference point in board-level discussions of AI investment discipline.