Recent research by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) highlights a rapidly expanding divide in the returns companies achieve from their artificial intelligence (AI) investments. While a small elite of organisations – termed “future-built” firms – are scaling AI to transform their business models and reap substantial benefits, the majority struggle to generate meaningful value despite heavy spending.
Key Insights from BCG’s AI Value Gap Study
According to BCG’s comprehensive study, only 5% of companies have successfully scaled AI initiatives to produce significant bottom-line impact. Conversely, about 60% fail to realize material gains, experiencing marginal improvements despite substantial investment in AI technologies. The remaining 35% are actively trying to scale AI but face challenges keeping pace with the leaders.
Nicolas de Bellefonds, BCG’s Global AI leader, states: “AI is reshaping the business landscape faster than any previous technology wave. The companies capturing real value are not merely automating but reshaping their core operations.”
Performance Disparities: Future-Built Firms vs. Laggards
- Revenue Growth: Future-built companies outperform others by 1.7 times in revenue expansion.
- Profit Margins: EBIT margins for these leaders are 1.6 times higher than laggards.
- Investment Intensity: Future-built firms spend 120% more on AI investments overall, dedicating 64% of their IT budgets to AI in 2025.
- Value Creation: Leaders anticipate double the revenue increases and 1.4 times greater cost reductions from AI applications compared to their peers.
This divergence fuels a vicious cycle for lagging firms, who continue losing ground as leaders reinvest gains to accelerate AI-driven transformation.
Leadership and Strategy: The Core of AI Value Realization
A critical cause behind this value gap lies in leadership approaches. In less successful firms, AI strategy is often delegated away from top management without a unified vision or focus, diluting efforts across fragmented projects.
In contrast, future-built companies:
- Establish AI as a CEO and board-level priority with clear, ambitious, multi-year targets.
- Engage nearly all C-level executives deeply in AI initiatives, compared to only 8% in lagging firms.
- Promote shared ownership of AI outcomes between business and IT units, increasing collaboration.
A senior retail executive cited by BCG stated: “We place particular focus on senior sponsorship and ownership within the business, enabling meaningful investment and accountability for AI benefits.”
Focusing on Core Business Reinvention
Rather than simply automating existing tasks, effective firms prioritize AI-driven reinvention of core workflows where the majority of value is concentrated:
- Research & Development (R&D)
- Sales
- Marketing
- Manufacturing
Notably, 70% of AI’s potential value lies within these functions. Future-built organizations have successfully deployed 62% of their AI projects versus just 12% for laggards.
Agentic AI: A Game Changer in Scaling AI Value
One of the most striking drivers of the value gap is the rise of agentic AI. This emerging AI capability combines predictive power with generative functions, enabling machines to reason, learn, and act autonomously with minimal human input—essentially serving as digital workers managing intricate workflows across supply chain, customer service, and more.
While agentic AI was scarcely mentioned in 2024, it already accounts for 17% of total AI value in 2025 and is projected to nearly double to 29% by 2028. Approximately one-third of leading firms are deploying agentic AI, whereas laggards mostly remain absent in this space.
Customer experience is the top application focus, with 50% of companies using agentic AI concentrating on improving customer service workflows.
> Amanda Luther, senior partner at BCG, emphasizes: “Agentic AI is reshaping workflows and redefining roles today. It is not just a concept for the future but an essential step for organisations to scale AI impact sustainably.”
Talent and Workforce Transformation
Successful AI adopters invest heavily in people, recognizing that the biggest hurdles are organizational, not technical. Key trends include:
- Upskilling over 50% of employees to work alongside AI technologies.
- Allocating structured learning time for employee AI enablement.
- Engaging employees in co-designing workflows involving AI agents to promote smoother adoption and trust.
This proactive focus on workforce transformation makes future-built companies six times more likely than laggards to successfully embed AI capabilities.
Building Scalable AI Platforms
Leading organizations avoid the pitfalls of disconnected, siloed AI pilots (sometimes called the “GenAI burden”) by investing in integrated AI platforms. Benefits include:
- Reusability of security and monitoring capabilities across AI projects.
- Accelerated deployment timelines through centralized platforms.
- Access to robust, governed data models enabling consistent data use—more than 50% of leaders operate on a single enterprise-wide data model versus 4% of laggards.
Recommendations for Organizations Lagging Behind
For the 95% of companies failing to realize value from their AI investments, BCG advises urgent action focused on three core pillars:
- People & Processes (70%): Prioritize workforce skills, change management, and redesign workflows to integrate AI effectively.
- Technology (20%): Invest in scalable AI platforms and data infrastructure.
- Algorithms (10%): Focus on developing and deploying robust AI models.
The greatest obstacles are organizational—strategy alignment, leadership engagement, and process redesign—not the AI technology itself. Companies must shift mindset and structure rapidly or risk falling irreversibly behind as AI continues to reshape industries.
Conclusion
The widening AI investment value gap represents a crucial inflection point for enterprises globally. Those that elevate AI to a strategic priority, foster cross-functional ownership, invest in agentic AI, and transform workforce capabilities will secure sustainable advantages in revenue growth, cost efficiency, and innovation.
As the AI landscape evolves swiftly, the time for decisive leadership and integrated AI strategies is now—delayed action may entail losing relevance in an increasingly competitive world.
References:
- Boston Consulting Group: AI Investment Value Gap Study, 2025
- Accenture, “The Future of Work in the AI Era,” 2024
- McKinsey Global Institute, “Notes from the AI Frontier: Scaling AI in Business,” 2025
- Harvard Business Review, “How Agentic AI Is Transforming the Workplace,” 2025