---
title: "Accountable Acceleration: Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise (Wharton / GBK Year 3 Executive Summary)"
type: source
tags: [ai-adoption, enterprise, gen-ai, roi, workforce, survey, wharton]
authors: [Korst, Jeremy; Puntoni, Stefano; Tambe, Prasanna]
year: 2025
venue: "Wharton Human-AI Research & GBK Collective — Year 3 Executive Summary"
kind: report
raw_path: "raw/AI Capabilities & Adoption/2025-Wharton-GBK-AI-Adoption-Report_Executive-Summary.pdf"
sources: []
key_claims:
  - "82% of US enterprise leaders (1000+ employees, >$50M revenue) use Gen AI at least weekly; 46% daily (+17pp YoY)."
  - "72% of firms formally measure Gen AI ROI with structured business-linked metrics (profitability, throughput, workforce productivity)."
  - "Three out of four leaders already report positive ROI; 80% expect positive ROI within 2–3 years; 88% anticipate budget increases in next 12 months."
  - "Roughly one-third of Gen AI technology budgets are allocated to internal R&D, signalling custom capability building."
  - "C-suite ownership is rising: 67% (+16pp YoY) report executive leadership of Gen AI; CAIO roles present in 60% of enterprises."
  - "89% of leaders agree Gen AI enhances employees' skills vs. 71% who agree it replaces them; 43% warn of skill-proficiency atrophy as usage climbs."
  - "Training investment softened (-8pp), confidence in training as the primary path to fluency down -14pp; 49% cite recruiting advanced Gen AI talent as top challenge."
  - "Sectoral adoption: Tech/Telecom, Banking/Finance, Professional Services lead; Manufacturing and Retail lag. IT and Purchasing/Procurement functions outpace Marketing/Sales and Operations."
  - "Three-wave longitudinal design: 2023 Exploration → 2024 Experimentation → 2025 Accountable Acceleration; N≈800 respondents per wave (2023: ~670)."
created: 2026-04-20
updated: 2026-04-20
---

# Accountable Acceleration: Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise

## Summary
Third annual cross-sectional survey from Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective (Korst, Puntoni, Tambe; October 2025) tracking Gen AI adoption among US enterprise decision-makers (1000+ employees, >$50M revenue) across HR, IT, Legal, Marketing/Sales, Operations, Product/Engineering, Purchasing/Procurement, Finance, and General Management. Based on ~800 respondents interviewed 26 June – 11 July 2025, with comparison waves from 2024 (~800) and 2023 (~670).

The study narrates a three-stage trajectory: **Exploration (2023)** → **Experimentation (2024)** → **Accountable Acceleration (2025)**. Three headline themes structure the 2025 findings:

1. **Everyday AI — usage is mainstream.** Weekly use reaches 82% (+10pp YoY), daily 46% (+17pp YoY). Self-reported competence has deepened, with double-digit gains in Operations (+24pp), IT (+13pp), Legal (+17pp). Adoption is broadest in repeatable, practical use cases (data analysis, document summarisation, editing/writing) that also receive highest performance ratings. Function-specific adoption patterns emerge: code writing in IT, recruitment/onboarding in HR, contract generation in Legal. IT and Purchasing/Procurement lead frequency; Marketing/Sales and Operations lag. VP+ respondents are markedly more optimistic than mid-managers (56% vs. 28% see their organisation adopting much faster than peers).

2. **Proving value — ROI rigour replaces FOMO.** 72% now track structured business-linked ROI metrics. 70% expect a major or revolutionary industry impact from Gen AI. 88% expect budget increases in the next 12 months; 62% expect >10% growth over 2–5 years. 75% already see positive returns, and 11% (+7pp) are actively reallocating from legacy IT and HR programmes. ~30% of Gen AI technology budgets are going into internal R&D, indicating in-house capability building.

3. **The human capital lever.** Executive ownership of Gen AI surged to 67% (+16pp); CAIO roles exist in 60% of firms. Guardrails (data security 64%, employee training 61%) are tightening. Yet training investment has fallen 8pp and confidence in training as the primary fluency path dropped 14pp. 43% of leaders warn of skill atrophy even as 89% see Gen AI as skill-enhancing. Junior/intern hiring impact is the most contested: 17% expect fewer intern hires vs. ~10% for mid-level+.

Bottom line: **people, not tools, now set the pace**. Talent, training, and trusted guardrails determine the speed at which usage converts to ROI.

## Connections
- Feeds [[concepts/ai-adoption]] with enterprise-side quantitative evidence.
- Complements bottom-up usage studies [[sources/2025-handa-which-economic-tasks-ai]] and [[sources/2025-tomlinson-working-with-ai]], which measure actual conversation-level usage rather than self-reported leader adoption.
- Skill-atrophy concern (43%) aligns with experimental findings in [[sources/2026-shen-ai-skill-formation]] and [[sources/2026-shen-anthropic-coding-skills-post]].
- Productivity-measurement gap contrasts with [[sources/2025-becker-metr-ai-developer-productivity]] (RCT shows AI actually slows experienced OSS developers despite perceived speedup).
- Rising CAIO governance connects to [[concepts/agentic-bpm]] discussions of organisational framing.
- New entities: [[entities/jeremy-korst]], [[entities/stefano-puntoni]], [[entities/prasanna-tambe]].