A new study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) warns that the gap between companies successfully harnessing artificial intelligence and those struggling to capture value is growing at an alarming pace.
According to the report, only 5% of firms are unlocking measurable bottom-line results from AI at scale, while 60% admit they are failing to gain any significant value despite substantial investments. The remaining 35% are making progress but concede they are not moving quickly enough to keep up.
“AI is reshaping the business landscape far faster than previous technology waves,” said Nicolas de Bellefonds, managing director and senior partner at BCG. “The companies that are capturing real value from AI aren’t just automating—they’re reshaping and reinventing how their businesses work. And they’re pulling away.”
Future-Built Firms Pull Ahead
BCG categorizes the top performers as “future-built” companies—organizations that have moved beyond small-scale experiments to embed AI into their core operations. These firms are already generating 1.7 times more revenue growth and 1.6 times higher EBIT margins than their peers.
Having gained early momentum, future-built firms are reinvesting aggressively. They plan to spend 26% more on IT overall in 2025 and allocate 64% more of their IT budgets to AI, resulting in total AI investments that are 120% higher than those of lagging competitors. The payoff: leaders expect double the revenue gains and 1.4 times greater cost reductions compared to firms stuck in pilot projects.
Leadership, Not Technology, Is the Key
One of the clearest differentiators is leadership. In lagging firms, AI strategy is often delegated to middle management, leading to fragmented initiatives and diluted results. By contrast, nearly all executives in future-built companies—up to the CEO and board level—are directly engaged in AI strategy.
These organizations foster a shared ownership model between business and IT teams, ensuring AI isn’t treated as a side project but as a driver of core transformation. A senior retail executive told BCG their company prioritizes “senior sponsorship and ownership of AI benefits by the businesses, which creates the room to invest.”
Agentic AI Emerges as a Game-Changer
The report highlights the rapid rise of agentic AI—a new wave of systems that combine predictive and generative capabilities, enabling them to “reason, learn, and act” with minimal human oversight.
Although barely discussed a year ago, agentic AI already represents 17% of total AI value in 2025, with projections showing it could climb to 29% by 2028. About a third of future-built companies are already deploying AI agents, particularly in customer service, while lagging firms have barely begun experimenting.
“Agentic AI isn’t a future concept—it’s already reshaping workflows and redefining roles,” said Amanda Luther, BCG managing director and senior partner. “But agents aren’t plug-and-play. Companies need to redesign processes, roles, and skills to integrate them effectively.”
Talent and Data as Differentiators
Future-built firms are investing heavily in upskilling their workforce, with more than half of employees set to receive AI-related training. These organizations also involve staff in co-designing new workflows alongside AI tools—making adoption smoother and trust stronger.
On the technology side, leaders are three times more likely to operate an integrated AI platform that centralizes governance, security, and monitoring. More than half also run on a single enterprise-wide data model, compared to just 4% of lagging firms. This foundation accelerates deployment and ensures scalability across the organization.
The Urgent Path Forward
For companies falling behind, BCG stresses that the greatest barriers are not technical but organizational. Success depends less on algorithms and more on leadership, processes, and people. The firm recommends the “10-20-70 rule”—focusing 70% of transformation on people and processes, 20% on technology, and just 10% on the AI models themselves.
