Deloitte and The University of Hong Kong formalize AI lab collaboration to advance organizational AI transformation across leadership, culture, and strategy

Deloitte China and The University of Hong Kong (HKU) signed an agreement to jointly establish the "Deloitte × HKU AI Lab for Organizational Transformation" and unveiled findings from the Deloitte-HKU AI Adoption in Enterprise Survey, which reveal that while most local firms are piloting or adopting AI in customer-facing and operational functions, only a small minority have scaled initiatives to deliver measurable profit impact.

The signing ceremony was officiated by Dora Liu, CEO of Deloitte China, and Professor Richard Wong, Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The University of Hong Kong. Bringing together Deloitte's cross-industry transformation expertise and HKU's world-class academic research, the AI lab serves as an industry-academia-research platform to accelerate AI commercialization in Hong Kong through joint research, industry engagement, and the co-development of AI-powered use cases and applications.

Dora Liu says, "Deloitte is proud to partner with the University of Hong Kong to launch the AI Lab for Organizational Transformation. This groundbreaking collaboration blends global industry insight with academic excellence to drive innovation, develop ethical leaders, and shape the future of business through AI. Together, we’re not just building a lab —we’re building a legacy of transformation, ethics, and impact."

Prof Richard Wong says, "As Asia’s Global University, HKU is proud to partner with Deloitte to launch the AI Lab for Organizational Transformation under CAMO, applying our organizational economics insights to real change. The lab will bridge theory and practice—through joint research, industry engagement, and practical use cases—to create knowledge that benefits society and help leaders in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, and worldwide build more innovative, resilient, and efficient organizations."

AI adoption widespread amid hurdles, with optimism fueling next phase investment

As the first initiative under the joint AI lab, Deloitte and HKU released findings from the AI Adoption in Enterprise Survey, based on responses from over 100 C-suite executives, 70% of whom were CEOs, CTOs, or CIOs. Nearly half represented large enterprises with more than 5,000 employees, spanning sectors such as consumer products and retail, automotive, energy, resources and industrial products. In addition to examining the current state of AI adoption in Hong Kong, the survey identifies critical barriers to success and explores both current and future application areas for enterprise AI.

Survey results show that AI adoption is widespread but shallow, with most respondents (69%) remaining in the experimentation or early adoption stages, where benefits are largely limited to team-level efficiencies. Close to a quarter (23%) have moved to operational or scaled deployment delivering measurable P&L impact, while only 4% described their adoption as transformative. Around 30% launched AI projects anticipating strong double-digit returns, whereas a similar proportion said ROI was not relevant in the early stages, viewing initial projects as strategic investments rather than profit-driven initiatives.

Pascal Hua, Technology and Transformation National Managing Partner, says, "These findings reveal a gap between executives' confidence in AI's long-term potential and the reality that enterprise-wide integration is still rare. Returns remain elusive, with nearly half reporting outcomes below expectations and only one in ten exceeding them, often due to weak measurement and overly ambitious business cases. As AI adoption is no longer a question of 'if' but 'how', closing this expectation gap will require organization transformation with alignment across leadership, culture, and strategy to unlock AI's full potential."

In terms of barriers to AI success, organizational and execution challenges outweigh technical ones. Half of the respondents pointed to organizational and cultural issues, while 47% cited execution hurdles, compared with 39% who highlighted technical concerns such as data quality and integration. The most common roadblocks were siloed departments that block cross-functional work (33%), a lack of quick wins to sustain momentum (32%), and integration bottlenecks from poor data quality and availability (31%). Cultural resistance (28%) and limited understanding of AI (27%) also emerged as key obstacles.

Professor Matthias Fahn, Associate Director of the HKU Center for AI, Management and Organization; Associate Professor of Management and Strategy of HKU, says, "Our survey shows a strong appetite for AI-driven transformation, but progress is constrained by organizational and leadership frictions. To capture the opportunity, firms must rethink incentives, strengthen cross-functional coordination, and communicate clearly to bring employees along—the very issues our survey, developed by the HKU Center for AI, Management and Organization (CAMO), was designed to surface. By bridging academic insights and organizational practice, and drawing on expertise in AI, organizational design, and leadership, our Center provides the foundation to understand these frictions and develop solutions—a mission we will continue to advance.”

Looking ahead, optimism continues to fuel AI investment despite uncertainty. Executives remain bullish about AI's long-term value, with projected business value rising from a modest 10–30% in the short term to 20–50% within five years. Nearly one-third plan AI investment budgets to increase by over 25%. While expectations for AI's business impact vary widely by industry, belief in its transformative potential and fear of falling behind are driving sustained investment.

Deloitte introduces DelphAI to support enterprise GenAI development in Hong Kong

Embracing a "human-plus-AI" collaboration model, Deloitte has also announced the roll-out of DelphAI in Hong Kong, a new local instance of the firm's enterprise Generative AI (GenAI) system, DelphAI. Built as a fully modular, open-source, cloud-agnostic, multi-tenant platform with access to frontier models such as OpenAI's GPT series, DelphAI supports the development of GenAI and agentic use cases within the firm's secure infrastructure, while ensuring compliance with cross-border data requirements and strict data security controls. DelphAI also serves as a client-facing accelerator, available as a packaged enterprise AI solution with native Hong Kong adapters.

Allen Wong, Hong Kong Business Managing Partner of Deloitte China, says, "The launch of DelphAI in Hong Kong underscores Deloitte's continued investment in scalable and secure AI innovation, supporting our people and the business community in navigating the next wave of digital transformation. Beyond empowering our 4,000 local professionals, this tool equips clients to harness GenAI for faster innovation, smarter decisions, and measurable business outcomes. By accelerating the path from concept to deployment, we aim to help clients realize greater impact, equip our professionals to work more productively with enterprise-grade governance, and strengthen Hong Kong's competitiveness in the AI economy."