From AI FOMO to AI hangover: corporate America is taking a long, hard look in the mirror right now

Companies in 2026 are expected to spend over $2.5 trillion on AI, a 47% increase on 2025.

This is a spending spree never seen before in the history of organizational investments, and it’s driven in part by companies giving all employees access to GenAI tools such as Co-Pilot, Gemini, or Claude.

Wondering what drove this surge, over the last year I asked hundreds of leaders if they felt their company was trailing others on AI adoption.

Their nearly unanimously positive response confirmed my hunch: Organizations have been living through a bad case of FOMO (the fear of missing out).

In this case, a universal fear of competitors getting a jump on them, both on innovation and on perceived cost savings, seemed to be driving their spending.

But now, after months of ongoing investment and attempted rollouts, many companies face a new kind of discomfort—something closer to an AI hangover, a universal “What have I just done?” moment.

The hangover has three main symptoms.

First, surprise at the intensity of pushback against AI.

Second, anxiety about how little business i mpact they can see.

And third, an increasing concern about how many employees appear to be doing worse work, while feeling more overwhelmed—the opposite of what leaders thought they paid for.

The most common go-to solution for this hangover? Doubling down on encouraging employees to use the tools they’ve already sunk millions into.

As someone who makes a living studying how our brains show up at work, this is a terrible idea.

Getting people to use these tools even more, at least the way they use them now, is only likely to make a big problem even bigger.

That’s because companies have the wrong mental model for this moment.