Boston Consulting Group Report Reveals a Growing AI Value Gap Between Top Performers and Struggling Firms
A groundbreaking study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals a significant disparity in the adoption and utilization of artificial intelligence (AI), with only five percent of companies generating substantial value, while the majority are failing to achieve any tangible results.
According to the report, titled “The AI Advantage,” these top-performing organizations are not merely automating processes; instead, they’re transforming and redefining their business operations, creating a widening gap in AI value generation. These elite companies, referred to as “future-built,” generate 1.7 times more revenue growth and 1.6 times higher EBIT margins compared to the lagging majority.
Nicolas de Bellefonds, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG, stated that AI is reshaping the business landscape faster than previous technology waves. He further emphasized that the companies capturing real value from AI are fundamentally reinventing their operations and pulling away from the competition.
Future-built companies are investing significantly more in IT, dedicating 64 percent more of their IT budget to AI by 2025. This increased investment results in an overall AI investment that is 120 percent higher than their slower competitors. Consequently, these leading firms expect double the revenue increases and 1.4 times greater cost reductions from their AI applications.
The disparity between top-performing organizations and lagging companies can be attributed to a lack of leadership and vision. Lagging firms often delegate AI strategy to lower management, fail to articulate a clear value proposition, and spread resources too thinly across disconnected initiatives.
On the other hand, future-built companies approach AI as a board and CEO-sponsored multiyear program with ambitious, clearly defined targets. They foster a model of shared ownership between business and IT departments, a practice they are 1.5 times more likely to adopt than their peers.
The report also highlights the emergence and investment in agentic AI – a technology combining predictive and generative capabilities that can “reason, learn, and act autonomously” with minimal human input. Agentic AI already accounts for 17 percent of total AI value in 2025 and is projected to almost double to 29 percent by 2028. The top firms are moving quickly, with a third already using agents, compared to almost none of the laggards.
Talent is another key differentiator. Future-built companies are aggressively upskilling their workforce to collaborate with AI, planning to upskill more than 50 percent of their internal staff and making investments in broad-based employee AI enablement. They also involve employees twice as often in the process of co-designing and reshaping workflows to incorporate AI agents, ensuring smoother adoption and building trust.
The report advises a “10-20-70 rule” for AI transformation efforts, focusing 70 percent on people and processes, 20 percent on technology, and only 10 percent on the algorithms themselves. The biggest roadblocks to achieving value from AI investments are not technical but organizational, relating to people, strategy, and processes. As the technology advances and the leaders accelerate, the window for catching up is closing fast. Firms that fail to act decisively now risk being permanently left behind.
