Deloitte study: eight out of ten organizations expect to increase their overall AI spending in the next fiscal year, with Gen AI taking a larger budget share

Global leaders’ confidence in their organizations’ artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives grows strong, according to the latest edition of Deloitte “The State of Gen AI in the Enterprise report: Now decides next”, as eight out of ten organizations (78%) expect to increase their overall AI spending in the next fiscal year. The study also reveals that generative AI (Gen AI) significantly increased its proportion of the total AI budget compared to the previous year, as the share of organizations allocating 20%–39% of their total AI budget to Gen AI rose by 12 percentage points, whereas the share of organizations dedicating less than 20% of their AI budget to Gen AI decreased by 6 percentage points.

In terms of challenges faced by organizations when developing and implementing Gen AI tools and applications, regulatory compliance (38%) has emerged as the top barrier, increasing by 10 percentage points compared to last year, followed by difficulties in managing risks (32%) and in implementation (27%). Setting the appropriate governance foundation will require perseverance and a strategic approach, as seven out of ten organizations (69%) say fully implementing a governance strategy will take over a year to resolve. 

C-suite leaders (CxOs) manifest a greater level of optimism about their organizations’ Gen AI implementations compared to other participants to the study. Two out of ten CxOs (21%) reported they feel Gen AI is already transforming their organization, compared to only 8% of non-C-suite respondents. When it comes to barriers in deploying and developing Gen AI, CxOs are less worried than non-executive employes about challenges such as trust, risk management, governance and regulatory compliance. Executives also have a more optimistic view of how their organization responds to these challenges, as only 47% of them believe it will take 12 months or more to overcome scaling barriers, compared to 60% of non-CxO respondents.

“Despite the technology’s rapid pace, business leaders continue to wonder when it will meet their transformational expectations. The report shows that most companies are transforming at the speed of organizational change, not at the speed of technology. It recommends that leaders should stay curious and challenge the orthodoxies of their organizations. While uncertainty about specific outcomes and their timing is unavoidable, executives should focus on what they can control - namely, organizational readiness, particularly in areas such as data, risk management, governance, regulatory compliance and talent” said Alexandru Reff, Country Managing Partner, Deloitte Romania and Moldova.

The study also shows that agentic AI (52%) - software solutions designed to complete tasks and meet objectives with little or no human supervision – and multiagent systems (45%) – a more advanced variant of agentic AI – are seen by leaders as the most interesting technologies in the future development of Gen AI. Many organizations have already explored autonomous agent development, with 68% of them already doing so to a moderate or large extent. However, organizations are still exploring the potential of Gen AI as over two-thirds of respondents said that 30% or fewer of their current experiments will be fully scaled in the next three to six months.

Even though scaling is still a work in progress, the return on investment (ROI) for organizations with the most advanced Gen AI initiatives has been positive, as 74% of respondents report that their projects are meeting or exceeding their ROI expectations. The study points out that IT (28%) is the top function in which Gen AI initiatives are the most advanced. Outside the IT functions, the most advanced Gen AI applications target areas such as marketing (especially in the consumer sector), operations (in energy, resources and industrials) and cybersecurity (especially in financial services).

“In order to attain enduring return on investment companies must progress beyond singular efforts and merge Gen AI into more advanced processes, including cybersecurity. This domain stands out in terms of profitability, the study shows, with 44% of respondents saying ROI has surpassed their expectations, more than any other function,” said Andrei Ionescu, Consulting Market Leader, Deloitte Romania.

The latest edition of Deloitte’s report “The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise: Now decides next” was conducted on more than 2,700 AI-savvy business and technology leaders directly involved in piloting or implementing Gen AI at major organizations across 14 countries and six industries, including consumer, energy, resources and industrials, financial services, life sciences and health care, technology, media and telecom and government and public services.

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