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Study finds 95% of companies see no return on AI investments due to ‘learning gap’
The study also highlighted the slow progression of AI adoption.
The study also highlighted the slow progression of AI adoption.
A new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has revealed that 95% of organisations are seeing zero return on their generative AI (GenAI) investments, despite $30–40 billion being poured into enterprise deployments.
Titled The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, the report surveyed 300 AI deployments and interviewed approximately 350 employees to understand why such a large share of AI initiatives fail to generate measurable profit.
According to the study, the primary barrier is not infrastructure, regulation, or talent, but a “learning gap.” Most GenAI systems, it notes, “do not retain feedback, adapt to context, or improve over time,” meaning that investments fail to scale effectively. Only 5% of integrated AI pilots were found to extract millions in value, while the vast majority produced no measurable impact on profit and loss.
The research found that while more than 80% of companies had explored or piloted tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, and nearly 40% had deployed them, these tools primarily enhanced individual productivity rather than improving overall financial performance. Failures were often linked to brittle workflows, lack of contextual learning, and misalignment with day-to-day operations.
The study also highlighted the slow progression of AI adoption: 60% of organisations evaluated AI tools, only 20% advanced to the pilot stage, and a mere 5% reached full production. Enterprise-grade systems, whether custom-built or vendor-supplied, are increasingly being sidelined.
MIT identified four key patterns defining the “GenAI Divide”:
Limited disruption: Only two of eight major sectors show significant structural change.
Enterprise paradox: Large firms lead in the number of AI pilots but lag in scaling them.
Investment bias: Budgets favour high-visibility, top-line functions over high-ROI back-office operations.
Implementation advantage: Partnerships with external vendors achieve twice the success rate of in-house builds.
The report underscores that simply deploying AI tools is insufficient. For companies to realise meaningful returns, systems must learn, adapt, and integrate seamlessly into operational workflows.
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