Companies reap the rewards of being AI-first

Few businesses are achieving measurable success with their artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, but those that are appear to be driven top-down, with senior management support, and have adopted an AI-first approach.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has reported that only a small percentage of companies it polled in a recent survey have achieved value at scale from their AI initiatives.

The global survey of 1,250 businesses found that 60% are not achieving material value at all. According to BCG, these firms reported minimal revenue and cost gains despite substantial investment. The study reported that 35% are scaling up their efforts and seeing some returns. However, BCG found that many of them admit that they are not moving far enough or fast enough.

The poll shows that the 5% of businesses that have seen value from their AI initiatives, which BCG categorises as “future-built” firms, have moved beyond automation and pilot AI projects to adopt an “AI-first” philosophy. BCG reported that significant business value is achieved when core business workflows are reshaped and reinvented end-to-end.

BCG said that these AI leaders achieve 1.7 times revenue growth and 2.7 times return on investment compared with peers. A retailer interviewed by BCG said its portfolio of AI initiatives has produced cost, margin and revenue impacts of hundreds of millions of dollars over the past five years. A company executive told BCG that the investor community regards these AI-based initiatives as strategically important drivers of value.

According to BCG’s research, future-built firms have adopted an AI-first approach, and installed and achieved organisational buy-in for an AI-first operating model that combines strong leadership with decentralised execution and shared ownership between business and IT.

“They are moving toward hybrid workflows based on human-AI collaboration supported by necessary upskilling, governance guardrails and partnerships,” the authors of BCG’s The widening AI value gap report wrote.

BCG also found that future-built businesses were aggressively sourcing or training people to build out the talent they require for their AI strategy and approach AI as board- and CEO-sponsored programmes. BCG said this means AI is elevated above isolated experiments or pilots.

The report noted that with top-level management sponsorship, the business can work on a multiyear, fully funded AI vision with an explicit execution roadmap. The survey found that nearly 100% of future-built organisations report deeply engaged C-suites, compared with only 8% of laggards.

From a technology perspective, BCG reported that these AI pioneers have built out a flexible, modular, interoperable technology stack and a data foundation based on central AI platforms, reusable agents, interoperable architectures and governed access to trusted enterprise data.

The survey results show that agents account for about 17% of total AI value in 2025. According to BCG’s forecast, the value derived from deploying agentic AI is expected to almost double to 29% by 2028. It reported that agents are expanding the value gap between future-built firms and their slower rivals. The report found that future-built companies already allocate 15% of their AI budget to agents.