Widening AI Value Gap: How Top Performers Outperform 95% of Companies in AI Investments, According to Boston Consulting Group
A groundbreaking study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals a widening divide between companies that are reaping substantial benefits from artificial intelligence (AI) investments and those struggling to generate any tangible value.
According to the report, only five percent of organizations are successfully leveraging AI at scale to boost their bottom lines, while a staggering 60 percent report minimal gains despite significant investments in the technology. The remaining 35 percent admit they’re not advancing quickly enough to keep pace.
Nicolas de Bellefonds, managing director and senior partner, global leader of BCG’s AI efforts, and coauthor of the report, commented, “AI is dramatically transforming business landscapes at an unprecedented rate.”
“Top-performing firms are not merely automating processes; they’re revolutionizing their operations to create a significant and growing AI value gap. These elite organizations generate 1.7 times more revenue growth and 1.6 times higher EBIT margins than the majority,” he added.
These high-performing companies, referred to as “future-built” by BCG, are not just succeeding—they’re setting themselves apart from the pack. In contrast, lagging firms often lack a clear vision for AI value and spread resources too thinly across disconnected initiatives.
Future-built organizations prioritize AI reinvention in core functions like R&D, sales, marketing, and manufacturing, resulting in 62 percent of their AI initiatives being already deployed compared to just 12 percent for laggards.
The report also highlights the emergence and investment in agentic AI, which combines predictive and generative capabilities, enabling autonomous reasoning, learning, and action with minimal human input. By 2028, agentic AI is projected to account for nearly one-third of total AI value. Leading firms are already embracing agents, with customer service being the top focus for 50 percent of companies.
Talent upskilling is another critical factor that separates high performers from laggards. Future-built companies invest in employee AI enablement and structured learning, involving employees twice as often in co-designing workflows to ensure smooth adoption and build trust.
Leading organizations also prioritize a central, integrated AI platform for common security and monitoring capabilities, accelerating deployment and ensuring enterprise-wide scale. Over half of these firms operate on a single, enterprise-wide data model, giving teams quick access to reliable and governed data.
BCG advises companies to focus 70 percent of their efforts on people and processes, 20 percent on technology, and only 10 percent on algorithms themselves for successful AI transformation. The report warns that the window for catching up is closing fast, with firms that fail to act decisively risking permanent loss of competitive advantage.
