A new study by SAP and Oxford Economics has revealed businesses around the world are increasingly driving positive return on investment (ROI) from AI, even as challenges continue to accrue.
While the amount the average global business spends on AI increased slightly to US$28 million this year, the level of ROI from that investment has spiked. Globally, companies expect to drive ROI of 21% this year (US$6.3 million), up from 16% last year. That ROI is expected to grow to 38% in two years’ time (US$15.9 million).
Agentic AI is central to those ROI expectations. In the next two years, average ROI from agentic AI is expected to reach US$17.6 million, more than quadrupling from last year’s estimates (US$4.3 million).
These insights have been revealed in new global research, Value of AI Report 2026, which surveyed 2,600 business leaders across 13 countries.*
Commenting on the research, SAP Chief AI Strategy Officer Sean Kask noted, “AI has moved from experiment to execution, and that’s beginning to show real returns. But there’s still a long way to go. Because AI that lacks context—whether that’s processes, data, or governance—at best creates activity without outcomes and at worst creates risk.”
AI inching closer to enterprise maturity
While global investment in AI increased slightly from US$26.7 milion in 2025, there were significant changes in key markets. Investment increased significantly in Brazil, UK, Australia, and Germany, while leading markets like China and India saw funding decreases.
Today, almost a third of all tasks (30%) in the average business are supported by AI, a figure expected to increase to 48% in two years. Yet, while strategic investment in AI has almost doubled year-on-year to 17%, piecemeal approaches remain by far the most prevalent (41%).
Some of this may be a leadership problem. Under a half of companies have a dedicated AI leader responsible for AI adoption (46%), clear frameworks about AI development (52%), or even training on AI capabilities and risks (41%).
Yet, despite those challenges, 69% of businesses are satisfied with their current AI ROI, even though more than two-thirds are not convinced AI is achieving its full potential.
Some of this optimism is due to agentic AI, since over eight in 10 (83%) businesses say agentic AI has moderate to very high potential to transform their organization. Yet, it is still early days for the technology, with only three percent of businesses saying they are fully prepared for agentic AI, while the majority say they are either partially prepared or not prepared at all.
Global businesses meeting key AI challenges
Organizations are facing a range of challenges achieving ROI from AI, including data, workforce, and governance issues.
Data quality remains the biggest challenge for global organizations. The number of businesses that say they are data ready for AI dropped from last year, with 73% of companies revealing challenges with incomplete data. And that is impacting day-to-day work, with 79% of businesses experiencing rework, delays, or backlogs due to low quality AI outputs.
Similarly, businesses are managing the workforce impacts of AI. Almost eight in 10 businesses (78%) are either unsure or agree their company upskilling is not keeping up with the evolution of AI tools. And just one percent of respondents said AI will have no impact on their workforce planning. Meanwhile shadow AI use is increasing year-on-year, with 69% saying it happens at least occasionally.
“The next step in achieving value will be to integrate AI deeply with contextual data and processes,” Kask said. “But businesses across the world must understand AI often provides value that is harder to measure than expected, and risk that moves faster than most governance can keep up with. Businesses are quickly discovering that AI governance plays a foundational role in unlocking the value from AI.”
Governance is a critical obstacle in the way of enterprise AI value. Just 12% of businesses say either their skills or their processes and frameworks are fully ready to govern AI effectively.
These issues may be exacerbated in an agentic future. Today, 38% of companies do not have a human-in-the-loop process for agentic workflows, 37% don’t have permission and access controls for agents, and only 44% have a registry of the agents in their business. This is critical, given more than two-thirds of businesses (69%) either agree or are unconvinced if they are deploying agents quicker than they can govern them.
Future of value from AI is the Autonomous Enterprise
“Realizing real value from AI is not going to be easy because it demands a new approach,” Kask concluded. “Businesses large and small will need to connect AI to the data and processes that run their organizations, and make sure it has the context and governance to drive trusted results. That’s what we call the Autonomous Enterprise. This isn’t a technical change; it’s a human one. Because you can only achieve real value if agents, processes, and people work as one.”
*Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, and United States.
