In August 2025, MIT's NANDA initiative published *The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025*, and one number dominated coverage: 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots deliver little to no measurable return. Only ~5% achieve rapid revenue acceleration.
It draws on 150 executive interviews, a 350-employee survey, and analysis of 300 public AI deployments.
It's not the models
Executives blamed regulation and model performance. MIT's data pointed elsewhere: a "learning gap" — tools that don't adapt to workflows, and organisations that don't redesign around them.
What the 5% do
- 1.Buy more than they build — vendor partnerships succeed ~67% of the time; internal builds about one-third as often.
- 2.Push ownership to line managers, not just a central lab.
- 3.Choose tools that integrate deeply and improve over time.
The divide isn't good AI vs bad AI. It's companies that changed how they work vs companies that just bought a tool.
If your initiative is stalling, the fix is rarely a better model — it's narrower scope, a clear owner, a measurable target, and deep integration.
Sources
- MIT NANDA — The GenAI Divide
- McKinsey — The State of AI 2025
Written by ivector
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