Research From Lenovo Reveals AI Is Paying Off, Yet Most CIOs Aren’t Ready for What Comes Next
- CIOs anticipate up to 179% ROI on AI investments, with further efficiencies expected as Agentic AI scales
- More than half of organizations (60%) are in late-stage AI adoption – though only 27% have a comprehensive governance framework in place
- Only 21% of CIOs use Agentic AI today, with half (55%) exploring or piloting use cases
- Hybrid AI emerges as preferred deployment model, used by almost two thirds (62%)
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Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026: The Race for Enterprise AI
AI is now recognized as a core engine of business reinvention and competitive advantage. However, there is a clear overconfidence problem among CIOs. While 60% of organizations are in late-stage AI adoption, only 27% have a comprehensive AI governance framework. Further limitations in data quality, in-house expertise, integration complexity, and organizational alignment are causing a mismatch between ambition and readiness.
With Agentic AI overtaking Generative AI as the top priority for CIOs in 2026, these factors will prevent many organizations from fully capitalizing on AI’s potential, leaving significant returns unrealized. Three in five (60%) surveyed stated that they are more than 12 months away from being ready to scale Agentic AI across their operations, and only 21% report significant usage today, with the majority still piloting or actively exploring use cases.
Released today, the fourth annual global Lenovo CIO Playbook, entitled The Race for Enterprise AI, draws on insights from 3,120 IT and business decision makers in key markets around the world. It captures a global inflection point and reinforces the value proposition for enterprise AI as both real and immediate, calling on CIOs to act now to avoid lagging competitors. The research marks a clear shift from AI experimentation to measurable value creation, with nearly all (96%) of those surveyed planning to increase AI investments in the next 12 months at an average growth rate of 13%, and 93% anticipating positive returns.
“Organizations are putting intelligence to work across the enterprise, but too many are doing so without the skills, governance, and readiness needed to scale,” said
Hybrid AI Now Preferred Enterprise Architecture
The research shows real-world business and financial considerations – ensuring data privacy, implementing advanced security strategies, and flexibility to customize and optimize infrastructure – are driving the continued rise of hybrid AI, an operating model that blends public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises compute. Nearly two thirds (62%) now prefer hybrid as their primary AI deployment model.
Infrastructure efficiency is a top success factor (21%), specifically high-performing, scalable, and energy-efficient AI compute ranks among the top five enablers of AI success.
“CIOs are entering a decisive new phase of AI adoption, where Agentic AI and enterprise-scale inferencing are rapidly moving from experimentation to business priority,” said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, President,
With AI PCs and edge endpoints central to an effective Hybrid AI strategy and securely running AI workloads locally, deploying AI-capable devices has emerged as the top IT investment priority for 2026.
“AI is scaling faster than ever, but CIOs are telling us the same thing: Trust and readiness remain the biggest barriers to unlocking real enterprise value. As hybrid AI becomes the architecture of choice and data sovereignty moves to the top of the board agenda, organizations need absolute confidence that intelligence can extend securely from the cloud all the way to the device,” said
Lenovo recently introduced Lenovo Agentic AI, a full-lifecycle enterprise solution for creating, deploying, and managing AI agents, alongside Lenovo xIQ, a suite of AI-native platforms designed to simplify and operationalize AI across the enterprise. Built on the Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage™, these offerings combine hybrid infrastructure, platforms, and services to address governance, integration, and performance from day one. Supported by the
To further enable real-world deployment, Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkEdge inferencing servers help enterprises turn trained models into production-ready, low-latency AI applications across data center, cloud, and edge environments. By enabling faster, more efficient inference at scale, Lenovo helps CIOs bridge the gap between AI ambition and day-to-day business impact.
Building on this end-to-end AI foundation, Lenovo’s Smarter AI for All vision is focused on bringing AI to more people and businesses at scale, from enterprise infrastructure to AI PCs that deliver intelligent, personalized experiences directly to users. As outlined at
Learn more about how enterprises can accelerate AI adoption with the right infrastructure, governance, and partnerships:
- Explore the full 2026 CIO Playbook report
- Lenovo for Hybrid AI
- Lenovo AI Services
- Lenovo AI Solutions
- Lenovo AI PCs for Business
About the CIO Playbook Study
This is the fourth year of surveying CIOs globally, with Lenovo commissioning IDC which conducted research between
About Lenovo
Lenovo is a
Lenovo is a trademark of Lenovo. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2026
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Source: Lenovo
