What happened
Published 2026-06-23 by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Kearney, drawing on deep engagement with more than 50 leading AI-first enterprises. The report's central finding: 'Despite more than $250 billion being invested in AI globally in 2025, only 25% of companies say it is having a transformative impact' — because most organisations are layering AI onto existing processes rather than redesigning around intelligence. The white paper defines five building blocks of AI-first success: (1) an intelligence engine with speed, scale and scope loops; (2) an adaptive, model-agnostic technology stack that owns control layers; (3) operations redesign allocating tasks between human and machine; (4) human-AI teaming with new talent and org models; and (5) new value creation through trust, product design and market positioning. Case evidence includes a commercial insurance workflow reduced from 28 days to under 3 hours and software companies reaching $100 million ARR in months versus years for predecessors.
Why it matters
The $250B-spent / 25%-transformative-impact gap is the sharpest quantified statement of the AI ROI problem circulating in 2026, and the five-block framework gives boards a concrete lens for diagnosing where their own organisation sits on the AI-first spectrum.
Action needed
Use the five-building-block framework as an agenda item at the next strategy or digital-transformation board session to assess whether your organisation is genuinely redesigning around intelligence or merely adding AI tools to legacy processes.