Anecdotal survey: two thirds of IT leaders report AI results, but only a few see them as critical

According to Azeem Azhar, a British entrepreneur and founder of the research group Exponential View, he asked around 160 IT vice presidents at an event in Las Vegas who among them could demonstrate measurable results from AI deployment. According to his statements in a podcast with Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic, two thirds of those present remained standing – more than he expected. But when he asked who had results significant enough that they would interrupt the CEO's summer vacation because of them, only about eight people remained standing.

Azhar concludes from this that companies are making progress in deploying AI, but slowly, and it is not clear whether this pace is sufficient to justify the current level of investment. According to him, some managers report that after initial successes, company leadership becomes more ambitious and AI budgets are growing even in slower markets such as Italy, despite partial failures.

At the same time, according to Azhar, companies are shifting away from costly frontier models toward open-weight alternatives – AI usage may thus continue to grow, but the bubble could still burst if enough money fails to flow back into financing the construction of data centers. Azhar further refers to a Boston Consulting Group survey, according to which about 70 percent of CEOs worldwide consider AI success important for how they are perceived in their role – which is a motivation to portray the situation more rosily than reality warrants. Azhar himself, by his own account, does not have a clear-cut answer to the question of the AI bubble and considers the situation to be "very balanced."