For nearly every CIO, implementing AI is their No. 1 task — that’s the directive they’re getting from the corner office.
CEOs have pegged researching and implementing AI at the top of their priority lists for their CIOs, according to CIO.com’s 2026 State of the CIO Survey. That finding mirrors the results in multiple other surveys and echoes CIO.com’s 2025 survey, which also found AI implementations as the top CEO priority for IT.
CEOs, however, have indicated that they’re no longer interested in AI experiments and proofs of concepts. They’re looking for AI initiatives that deliver quantifiable value. The most strategic CEOs are going further, seeking to leverage AI in transforming how their organizations work and what products and services they offer. And they expect their CIOs to create those opportunities and not merely collaborate on seizing them.
“CEOs want CIOs to stand up and lead on how to unlock the real value of AI, to shift from productivity gains to different value propositions,” says Shanky Viswanathan, head of business innovation at Tata Consultancy Services. “There’s a real opportunity for CIOs to show how AI can be used in the business.”
That, though, is a tall order — one that many CIOs and C-suites more broadly aren’t yet fulfilling.
“A lot of CIOs still struggle with identifying use cases across the enterprise where AI can make them so much better, and they still struggle with identifying the workstreams and processes and the pain points and how they can reinvent how the organization operates with AI,” says Jennifer Carter, a senior principal analyst in the CIO and executive leadership practice at research firm Gartner.
She adds: “There are limitless possibilities, but many CIOs are caught doing some catch-up in understanding the full potential of AI even as CEOs are looking at them and asking, ‘What can we do with this?’”
What CEOs want from AI
The CEO mandate to capitalize on AI is not new this year. It has been a high-level goal at many organizations since generative AI muscled its way into the enterprise with the November 2022 release of ChatGPT.
What’s relatively new this year is the CEO requirement for CIOs to deliver tangible ROI for the organization’s AI investments. In fact, CEOs listed “establish AI policies and ROI metrics” as a top 10 priority for CIOs this year, according to the State of the CIO Survey.
Viswanathan says CEOs have become frustrated that “the amount of money they spend on AI is far, far bigger than the returns. Yes, they’re getting some productivity gains. but it’s been quite fragmented.”
Now, after years of AI investments, CEOs have a sense of urgency to use AI to drive revenue, he and others assert. That directive aligns with other CEO priorities for IT identified in the State of the CIO survey, including help in reaching revenue growth targets and leading innovation, at No. 6 and 7 respectively.
Daniel Saroff, group vice president of end-user research and consulting at IDC, says his firm’s research also shows chief executives pushing IT to use AI not just for productivity gains but to drive revenue growth.
IDC’s C-Suite Tech Survey found over half of CIOs and CTOs globally cite AI and automation as their primary business objective.
“Organizations are under real pressure to change how they compete, how they develop products, and how they deliver services to customers,” Saroff says.
To deliver on that priority, CIOs need to move beyond the experimentation they have been doing and instead design initiatives that can be implementated at scale.
“It’s a more deliberate effort where we link [AI initiatives] to business outcomes,” he says. Organizations “have struggled getting from experimentation and pilots to something that actually runs in production and delivers measurable value. The transition turns out to be harder than it initially looked.”
There are various reasons for those struggles, Saroff says. Problems with the data that fuels AI is one. Technical debt and legacy environments also slow innovation and make it more expensive than anticipated. Budget pressures compound the challenges.
Additionally, he says, IT still struggles to be a business strategy partner in some organizations.
Opportunities for the CIO
Gartner research has identified similar trends in what chief executives want from IT, with technology being a top 3 strategy priority for CEOs, coming in just behind growth at No. 1 and finance (e.g., expense management) at No. 2.
“When we say they’re prioritizing technology, we find according to CEOs it’s about AI,” Carter says.
Carter, like others, says CEOs aren’t yet seeing IT deliver transformative AI initiatives. She puts some of that on CEOs, though, saying that they still think about AI in terms of productivity gains and optimization. She points to research showing that nearly all CEOs use AI to save time while only 2% are using AI for tasks, such as decision support, that drive growth.
This creates an opportunity for CIOs, Carter says. By identifying where AI can remake how the organization operates and what it produces, CIOs will help their CEOs win in the market.
“CIOs should double down on the story of the technology that will fuel high-impact, high-spotlight initiatives,” she says. “As tech execs, they have the responsibility to raise awareness on what the technology will do and to build the needed tech literacy. It’s important for CIOs to remember that they’re in the biggest wave of opportunity the role has ever seen.”
Some CIOs are, indeed, delivering on this, Viswanathan says.
“There are some tech leaders who show how AI is not a means unto itself, and they’re able to unravel the opportunities,” he says. “They’re asking, ‘Can AI unlock value for me in areas where I struggled in the past, like responding to customer demands in a different way, or rethinking how supply chain management can happen, in reimagining products?’ These technology leaders are responding to those questions with AI front and center.”
Securing the enterprise
The corporate priorities handed down to Ajay Sabhlok, CIO and CDO at tech company Rubrik, reflect the findings from CIO.com’s State of the CIO Survey.
“Our CEO’s goal is to reduce and eliminate the business operations bottleneck,” Sabhlok says. And the CEO’s goal for IT is “to help Rubrik gain efficiency and productivity across all business processes.”
IT took that message to heart, says Sabhlok, explaining that the IT team itself is the first “to pivot over to an AI first organization. The pivot means that we must adopt an AI mindset in all of our IT processes and personal productivity improvement, with the goal of achieving resource optimization.”
Like some CIOs who are bringing AI to IT, Sabhlok is establishing AI-powered processes across engineering, architecture, FinOps, business self-service, DevOps, and user support. “That includes rolling out core AI platforms and enabling users to use them effectively in partnership with IT AI engineering for complex use cases,” he adds.
Another key CEO objective for Sabhlock is strengthening Rubrik’s security posture, something he’s doing in part by ensuring “efficient resolution of all identified risks and vulnerabilities” and transforming the “infrastructure across data center, cloud, and network with embedded security.”
Many CEOs share that agenda, as the State of the CIO Survey’s No. 2 CEO priority for IT is upgrading IT and data security to reduce corporate risk. CIOs, IT advisers, and other researchers aren’t surprised that cybersecurity is so high on CEOs’ lists, given the financial, legal, and reputational risk associated with a data breach or cyber incident.
“CEOs are prioritizing a strong foundation of trust, resilience, and security, especially as AI adoption increases the importance of data integrity, governance, and risk management,” says Paul Leinwand, principal of enterprise and functional strategy at PwC US.
Viswanathan likewise has seen cybersecurity remain a top priority for CEOs.
Priorities beyond AI and security
Next-wave innovations such as quantum computing are also making appearances on some CEO priority lists, particularly among chief executives in banking, life sciences, and logistics — industries where quantum computing is already making an impact, Viswanathan says. “Those CEOs are looking for IT to talk about the potential opportunities with quantum,” he notes.
And he sees CEOs asking CIOs to prioritize optimization and modernization “because that gives them a significant opportunity to funnel [savings from those moves] into emerging tech.”
Rounding out the top five CEO priorities for IT from the State of the CIO Survey are strengthening IT and business collaboration; improving customer experience, and leading digital business/digital transformation initiatives.
Leinwand says those mirror what he’s seeing.
“[CEOs] want IT to enable enterprisewide transformation of the operating model by connecting data, workflows, and decision-making across the organization rather than operating in functional silos — and doing this in core operations and processes, not just running pilots,” he says.
A fundamental shift in how companies compete is what is driving these CEO priorities, as are the challenges that CEOs face in generating sustainable growth, he notes.
“CEOs are expecting technology to be a big enabler of expanding customer engagement, better insight development, clearer innovation programs, and to open up new revenue-creating channels through technology,” Leinwand adds.
CIOs are increasingly judged in their ability to deliver on all this, according to IDC’s Saroff. He points to IDC data showing that in just one year revenue generation jumped from sixth to third place as a top CIO success metric.
“So some CIOs are starting to be measured — or measure themselves — on business outcomes rather than just operational performance,” he adds.