Forrester: over half of CIOs expect to miss AI ROI targets in 2027
TechRadar reports that more than half of the CIOs surveyed in Forrester's State Of AI Survey 2026 expect to miss their AI ROI targets in 2027, even as Forrester claims AI will account for a fifth of all business technology spend that year. Around 45% of CIOs want to see ROI within one year to call a rollout a success, and only 22% of AI decision makers reported a positive impact on earnings over the past year. Forrester also expects cheaper open-weight models such as Gemma, Llama and Qwen to gain ground for high-token enterprise workloads, and warns that a quantum computing breakthrough could strain budgets further.
The survey figures, as reported by TechRadar, suggest enterprise AI spending is still running ahead of measurable financial returns, which is putting more scrutiny on how bosses justify AI budgets.
- One in two CIOs expect to miss their AI ROI targets in 2027
- AI budgets are rising, but not enough to keep up with inflation
- A quantum computing breakthrough could put further strain on budgets
New research has claimed AI is set to account for a fifth of all business technology spend in 2027 as companies invest more in thought-out deployments.
However, despite the fact that experimentation is evolving into meaningful adoption, more than half of the CIOs surveyed in Forrester's latest State Of AI Survey 2026 expect to miss their AI ROI targets next year.
The report also details what it means for AI to be considered a success – around half (45%) of CIOs prefer to see an ROI within one year to consider their rollouts a success.
AI still isn't delivering promised ROI
Over the last year, just one in five (22%) AI decision makers have reported a positive impact on their earnings.