翻訳待ち：McKinsey says enterprise AI is finally 'on the road to ROI'

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Four years into the generative AI revolution, consulting giant McKinsey reckons we've finally started the engine and are officially "on the road to ROI." Whether that road leads to actual profit-making and how long it takes to travel is anyone's guess, because the firm's data suggests most respondents still aren't reporting an enterprise-level earnings contribution from AI. McKinsey surveyed 1,719 professionals and business leaders from around the world and across industries for its report on the State of AI in 2026, and what it found sounds a lot like what similar studies have determined in the past couple of years. According to the report, more businesses are deploying more AI in the belief that their investments will start paying off, but the number of people reporting an actual earnings boost from their AI initiatives has remained flat. According to the survey data, 37 percent of respondents “attribute at least some EBIT [earnings before interest and taxes] impact to AI use,” which is “about the same” share as respondents to its 2025 survey. The word "some" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because only a small minority of respondents qualify as McKinsey’s AI high performers. McKinsey considers AI high performers to be respondents who attribute at least 5 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to AI use and describe the technology’s impact as “significant.” The number of high performers has remained flat since last year - just 6 percent of survey respondents met both criteria. Despite the face-slapping reality of hard-to-find benefits, companies are plowing ahead with their AI investments - at least for now. “Organizations’ conviction in AI is growing faster than the immediate financial returns they can attribute to it,” McKinsey said. “More expect AI to reshape their business over the next three years than did a year ago, and they continue to plan to invest more.” Once you sink your tech budget into all that Kool-Aid, it’s hard to put the powder back in the pack, it seems. Agentic AI use is up, says McKinsey, with 40 percent of respondents at organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue saying they’re scaling AI agents, compared to 27 percent last year. Coding agents are also on the rise, with nearly a third of respondents saying their organizations decided against buying one or more software products or features in favor of building the functionality in-house with agentic coding tools. Hopefully those firms have set aside a budget to bring in developers to fix the issues AI-generated code can introduce, too. McKinsey also found that, while a majority of organizations plan to increase their AI investments, many are butting up against the fact that it’s really expensive, with 20 percent of respondents saying AI-related operating costs have constrained their use of the technology. All of that set aside, 80 percent of respondents who use AI in their roles said the technology has improved their individual productivity, even as those gains have yet to translate into broad financial impact for organizations. What do respondents expect AI to mean for headcount? Well, more cuts, apparently. While 43 percent of respondents still expect little or no AI-related change in total employment, an increasing number (39 percent this year compared to 32 percent in 2025) expect their employer to cut jobs thanks to AI in the coming year. Like the belief that AI is eventually going to pay for itself, that might not be reflected in reality either, if McKinsey’s prior year data is anything to go on. According to the consulting outfit, workforce reductions in 2025 “fell well short of what respondents in last year’s survey had anticipated,” suggesting that turning to AI to replace humans isn’t a sure bet, which we could have told you without you having to pay McKinsey big bucks to suss that out. So, where does that leave the future of AI in the enterprise? Pretty much in the same place as it was before: A huge money sink that has yet to prove it’s worth the cash businesses are dumping into it. Individual productivity boosts thanks to the automation of soul-crushing busywork may help employees feel better, but that’s not measurably beneficial to a business’ bottom line. As to when McKinsey thinks organization-wide AI benefits reported by respondents, like increased employee and customer satisfaction, “improvements in innovation,” and competitive differentiation, might actually lead to returns on those ever-increasing investments in tools provided by big AI, that wasn’t mentioned in the report. We asked the firm what its experts think, but didn’t hear back. For now, AI ROI remains in the same place as fusion power, fully autonomous driving, and practical quantum computers: Forever a few years away from reality and in dire need of more capital. ®