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Key Takeaways With nearly half of AI initiatives failing to launch, business leaders need a better way to measure success than just ROI.
Speed is the ultimate multiplier for value, and ROAI (Return on AI) helps you capture it faster.
Traditional ROI falls short for AI because AI solutions rarely follow a predictable build-and-launch cycle. ROAI reframes value not just as what you earn, but when you start earning it.
In recent years, we’ve all watched companies pour staggering amounts of energy and money into “AI initiatives.” Some of these efforts were transformative, but many others took far longer than expected or quietly stalled out — stuck in planning cycles, technical sprawl, or endless experimentation. The average deployment time is eight months, and nearly half of the initiatives never make it to production at all.
After stepping into my role at Vida, where we build AI phone agents used across various industries, I noticed something consistent across customers, prospects and partners. The companies earning the most meaningful wins weren’t the ones with the largest AI budgets. They were the ones who moved the fastest. That observation eventually led me to a concept we now call ROAI: Return on AI. It’s a simple but powerful way to evaluate not just what AI returns, but how quickly those returns begin.
Related: Nearly 95% of Companies Saw Zero Return on In-House AI Investments, According to a New MIT Study: ‘Little to No Measurable Impact’
ROAI didn’t begin as a buzzword. It emerged from numerous conversations — customers sharing their breakthroughs, internal teams comparing timelines, and business leaders trying to make sense of AI costs versus value. In every conversation, one variable kept rising to the top — time:
Time to deploy
Time to test
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