Dive Brief:
- Four in five technology executives said they feel pressure from their CEO to conduct AI transformations within their organizations, but just 11% said they actually feel prepared for the scale of AI agent deployment over the next year, an Institute for Business Value study released Monday found. IBM's leadership think tank surveyed 2,000 C-suite technology executives as part of its 2026 Tech Leader Study, conducted in partnership with Oxford Economics in Q1.
- Of the executives surveyed, 70% said teams in their organization are deploying AI faster than IT can track, and two-thirds of CIOs and CTOs said they are held accountable for AI systems that they do not fully control.
- Tech leaders should double down efforts to redesign how organizations control their governance and financial control of AI, said Matt Lyteson, CIO at IBM, in the report. Leaders should work on "embedding control and visibility from the start, so they can scale with confidence,” he said.
Dive Insight:
Expectations for CIOs and CTOs to deploy AI and form governance policies continue to rise, the report found. Executives are feeling the pressure as efforts are underway — 61% reported that they fear losing their job if they fail to lead their organization through the AI transition, a recent Writer survey found.
By next year, those surveyed by IBM anticipated a 38% increase in the number of AI agents used by their organizations. But governance is not keeping up — the report found that 77% of organizations’ AI adoption is outpacing their governance capabilities.
“Many organizations are still operating with architectures, controls and funding models designed for human-speed decision making, in systems that now operate at machine speed,” Lyteson said in the report.
Uneven adoption can lead to security and financial risks, the report found. Organizations that embed governance and controls directly into their AI systems see 25% fewer security incidents than those that rely on manual governance, or human approval of every AI output.
Organizations that see their AI control, governance and investments as interconnected aspects of their AI strategy will achieve the most success, the report said.
Tech leaders should see governance as an engineered system that defines what agents can do, when they must pause and how decisions will remain explainable across the AI lifecycle, the report said.
The report also found that companies that have fully operationalized their financial management of AI have better visibility into real-time AI spend and more easily find ROI. Those that build governance and financial control into their AI systems deploy 16 times more AI agents, deliver 18% higher operating margins and spend four times less on their AI budgets, IBM found.
CIOs and CTOs must build financial visibility into the process while developing their AI controls, the report found. Though ROI can be defined differently by each department, 2026 has seen executives’ focus shift from innovation to proving measurable returns.
“If you feel a widening gap between the pace of AI change and your organization’s ability to respond, know that that gap is strategic, not just operational,” Lyteson said in the leadership report. “Closing it will require redesigning the enterprise itself — its architecture, its controls, and its operating model.”
