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AI is supposed to save companies billions. So far, it isn’t. A new Bain & Co. survey of 951 large companies across nine sectors found that AI cost savings are coming in far below executives’ projections, according to Bloomberg. Among companies measuring their AI savings, 40% saw reductions of just 10% or less. That’s well below what most were expecting.
The disappointing returns matter because 44% of companies surveyed are funding their next wave of generative and agentic AI investments with those projected savings. Bain calls the strategy “a circular bet with a structural leak.”
But the biggest surprise is this: the No. 1 reason AI programs underperform isn’t budget or strategy. It’s that most companies’ data is so disorganized their AI can’t get to it. That problem, Bain warned, “should be making executives uncomfortable.”