Most CEOs are ready to spend even more on AI in 2026 despite no clear path to ROI

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Looking ahead: Despite widespread warnings of an imminent AI collapse, many top executives are still going all-in on artificial intelligence capital expenditures. Meanwhile, CEOs are growing increasingly disillusioned with the supposedly transformative capabilities of LLMs and chatbots.

A recent survey by PR advisory firm Teneo shows that a majority of CEOs from hundreds of publicly traded companies remain bullish on AI spending over the next year. It surveyed more than 350 executive clients at firms earning $1 billion or more in revenue between October and November 2025.

Teneo said 68 percent of CEOs plan to increase their organizations' AI spending in 2026. However, fewer than half of current implementation projects have delivered a return on investment. Artificial intelligence adoption has fared better in marketing and customer service workloads, while "high-risk" areas such as security, legal, and human resources remain more challenging.

Analysts have predicted that AI will cause significant disruption in the job market. Teneo's survey indicates that it might not be so bad, as 67 percent of companies currently expect to increase the number of entry-level positions. Meanwhile, 58 percent of surveyed executives anticipate growth in senior leadership roles.

Executives are showing mixed signals about the global economy. Among large firms, only 31 percent expect improvement in the first half of 2026, a steep decline from 51 percent a year ago. In contrast, 80 percent of CEOs at smaller companies anticipate economic improvement, slightly down from 83 percent previously. Corporations also cited US tariffs and geopolitical crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere as the most pressing issues they expect to face in the near future.

Meanwhile, Teneo surveyed roughly 400 institutional investors, including commercial and central banks, credit unions, government-controlled companies, and pension funds. It found that 53 percent of these organizations expect to see a return on investment from AI initiatives within the next six months.

The vast majority of large companies – those with $10 billion or more in revenue – believe AI projects will take more than six months to generate a profit. According to HSBC, it expects AI frontrunner OpenAI to continue losing hundreds of billions of dollars for the next several years.

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Most CEOs are ready to spend even more on AI in 2026 despite no clear path to ROI

 

[yRaz]

It's easy to spend money that isn't yours

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Companies constantly spend money on technology that rarely lives up to the promises of increased productivity, so that isn't new or crazy.

Further, most non-AI companies haven't spent that much on AI yet. A chat license for all your employees is a rounding error for expenses. There are likely specific "let AI crunch this dataset for us and do something" projects just spinning up given the time it takes to do anything in bigger companies.

The mindshare shift in AI isn't magic is only stalling the massive crazy projects, not the reasonable intermediate ones that AI could maybe save money. Just like that new CRM or database software.

 

[bviktor]

Of course. No one likes to admit they were wrong all along. So most of the time they just double down. Making the landing back to Earth even more painful.

Cognitive dissonance is awful

 

[3volv3d]

There's a clear path to the Republic of Ireland. Ferries everywhere.

Ai is a scam. It's ability to scam though is amazing. And people will exploit people at every opportunity.

Trump is making a fortune ruining lives and getting away with it. Making rich dorks richer.

Elysium here we come woooo. Space race. Face race.

 

[James321]

They should go all in, don't hold back. So when it pops you go out of business. We don't want you to survive, we don't need you to survive. GO BOOM.

 

[human7]

It's easy to spend money that isn't yours

Indeed, even more so when there is no accountability for failure, but a golden parachute at worst. I could wish for the golden parachute to turn into lead when the bubble bursts, but unfortunately the rest of us will be rained on regardless, so it won't even matter.

They should go all in, don't hold back. So when it pops you go out of business. We don't want you to survive, we don't need you to survive. GO BOOM.

I would like the gaming divisions of certain companies to survive at least, though perhaps with quite the change in leadership.

 

[Hooda Thunkett]

There's a clear path to the Republic of Ireland. Ferries everywhere.

Ai is a scam. It's ability to scam though is amazing. And people will exploit people at every opportunity.

Trump is making a fortune ruining lives and getting away with it. Making rich dorks richer.

Elysium here we come woooo. Space race. Face race.

Most of the above comment is, at best, disjointed. However, the statement "[AI's] ability to scam is amazing" might be pure genius. I hadn't thought of it exactly that way before, but that right there might be the perfect way to describe AI Chatbots: Artificial Scammers.

 

[Rapob]

Too many CEOs don't know a thing about tech, they know how to run a company (in some cases).

AI hype makes them buy in on AI, without realizing why and how. AI this, AI that.

AI "bubble" probably won't burst, AI GPU demand will just slow down, we are at the peak right now.

Nvidia has been up and down for like half a year at this point. Stagnated really.
Down from the 207 USD peak in October to 174 today for example. Back in Juli almost same price as now. Too risky really. Which is why tons of banks, big investors and holding companies slowly sells out of tech (especially AI) stocks. Nvidia in particular. I feel Nvidia will go down rather than up over the next few years but it will for sure go up and down still.

AI is not going anywhere but companies won't continue spending big money on AI, year after year, without decent ROI that is for sure

 

[SirDigby]

Agree with all that's been said above, but I also want to add that I think for many companies, I think they're also playing AI chicken against their competitors, they're afraid to not invest in AI because their competitors are and goading each other on, betting on the fact that it'll eventually pay off.
At some point, the balance sheet will come calling.

 

[AlexIL]

The Fall will be hilarious. Gamers will benefit wildly because Nvidia cards will be dirt cheap after it.

 

[Hogelem]

You mean, despite the media desperately promoting the idea that AI has no ROI and other similar narratives, while taking their ad revenue from the megacorporations using AI the most.

 

[Liranan]

The Fall will be hilarious. Gamers will benefit wildly because Nvidia cards will be dirt cheap after it.

The chips they're investing in are useless to us, as they lack a lot of the hardware capabilities that we, as regular consumers, require. But we will definitely be able to buy data centres for the price of a single mid range GPU.

 

[OortCloud]

CEOs living up to their usual totally erratic best. I've never worked for a single company where the CEO was anything but a massive liability (and usually a huge tool too). Everybody quietly works around them and tries to keep the back-stabbing narcissist in their box while they do real work.

 

[Dirtronix]

"The Law of Unintended Consequences" will surely straighten this all out. Betting in high $takes poker without looking at all your cards.

 

[Watzupken]

CEOs are basically there to hype up the company's product to fill the pockets of major shareholder, board and themselves. It is not their money that they are throwing, so there is no much for them to lose. This can only continue until financial institutions and investors become more and more concern about ROI. Once source of funds dries up, no institution can continue throwing money when they have none.

 

[LimyG]

The chips they're investing in are useless to us, as they lack a lot of the hardware capabilities that we, as regular consumers, require. But we will definitely be able to buy data centres for the price of a single mid range GPU.

That's a classic! Thanks for the good laugh!!

 

[EvilRebar]

The market requires the prospect of outsized returns to justify the current asset bubble, so everyone agrees that generative AI is right around the corner.

 

[Bamda]

We're clearly racing into the great economic collapse of the 21st century.

 

[ZedRM]

Most CEO's are drooling knuckle-draggers, so this is not a surprise.

 

[LimyG]

Most CEO's are drooling knuckle-draggers, so this is not a surprise.

True.