McKinsey says enterprise AI is finally 'on the road to ROI'

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.