World's Fair 2025
AI Consulting in Practice – NLW, Superintelligent, @AIDailyBrief
Overview
This talk explores the current state of enterprise AI adoption, moving beyond the narrative of an AI bubble to focus on tangible value and return on investment (ROI). It presents findings from a study collecting self-reported ROI data across various AI use cases, highlighting that organizations are indeed finding value, with a significant portion reporting modest to high ROI. The discussion emphasizes the growing adoption of AI, particularly in software engineering, and the increasing deployment of agents within enterprises, despite challenges in scaling beyond pilot phases.
Who should watch
- AI Engineers
- Product Managers
- Builders and developers exploring AI applications
- Executives evaluating AI investments
- Those interested in enterprise AI adoption trends
- Individuals seeking to understand AI ROI and impact metrics
Key takeaways
- Enterprise AI adoption is growing, with a significant surge in coding and software engineering use cases.
- Agent adoption in enterprises has seen a substantial increase, jumping from 11% to 42% in full production deployment within a year.
- Despite increased adoption, many organizations remain in pilot or experimental phases, with only 7% claiming full-scale AI implementation.
- Larger organizations tend to be ahead in scaling AI compared to smaller ones, and adoption patterns are becoming more varied across departments.
- A bifurcation is emerging between AI leaders and laggers, with leaders adopting AI more comprehensively and strategically, focusing on revenue growth and new capabilities beyond simple time savings.
- Organizations are increasingly optimistic about realizing ROI from AI investments, with a significant pull-forward of expectations from 3-5 years to 1-3 years.
- Time savings is the most common reported ROI category, representing about 35% of use cases, often clustering around 1-10 hours saved per week.
- Automation and agentic use cases are showing significantly higher self-reported ROI compared to other categories.
Notable quotes
*We are seeing pretty meaningful uptake of agents inside the enterprise.*
*The ways that we have measured impact of previous technologies and just previous initiatives are kind of falling flat with AI.*
*Time savings is the default. It's the starting point for so many organizations.*
Unofficial community note. Prefer the recording for nuance.