A Kyndryl survey finds that more executives report returns on artificial intelligence spending while fewer say their organizations are fully prepared for external risks, highlighting a gap between AI deployment and operational readiness.
Edelman Intelligence surveyed 3,700 senior business and technology leaders across 21 countries and 24 industries for Kyndryl from July 10 to Sept. 2, 2026. Among respondents, 64% said their organizations had seen positive returns on AI investments, compared with 54% in the 2025 survey. The two surveys did not track the same organizations over time.
Kyndryl’s report describes 24% as the share saying their organizations were completely ready to manage external risks, down from 31% in 2025. A separate Kyndryl announcement calls the figure “average readiness.” Neither document explains how that aggregate was calculated.
AI use has spread beyond trials: 84% said their organizations were deploying it in workflows beyond pilot projects. The share describing their organizations as being in an experimentation phase fell to 49% from 62% a year earlier. Still, 24% reported a failed AI investment, and 21% said their organizations had canceled a major AI initiative.
Readiness for specific threats also declined. The share reporting complete preparation for cyberattacks fell 11 percentage points to 26%, while the figure for competition from outside an organization’s industry dropped 10 points to 23%.
Although 71% described their IT systems as mostly or fully modernized, 66% of surveyed chief information officers said their infrastructure needed significant re-architecture to support AI at scale. Those figures cover different respondent groups and questions. Kyndryl identified legacy systems, fragmented data and technical debt as obstacles; among leaders who had not seen positive AI returns, 33% said integration was more complex than expected.
Organizational changes lagged as well. Only 27% said their organizations had formally revised AI-related roles and responsibilities, and 29% reported fully implementing change management for AI adoption. Kyndryl Chairman and CEO Martin Schroeter said, “AI ambitions are moving faster than the systems needed to support them.”
On operational control, 68% said technology offering full control when needed was worth a premium of at least 10%, while 60% said greater control was worth slower deployment of advanced capabilities. The AI return figures are respondents’ assessments, not a common measure of financial gain, a distinction also relevant to earlier EconoTimes coverage of companies reporting AI gains without quantifying the payoff.
