AIQ Benchmark 2026
The 2026 AIQ Benchmark
What 539 senior enterprise data and AI decision-makers told us about where they are investing, what they are buying and when.
- Decision-makers surveyed
- 539
- Help choose AI vendors
- 81%
- Have significant AI budgets
- 58%
- Are buying this year
- 75%
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Key findings
The people we surveyed control real AI budgets, choose the vendors and plan to buy this year.
- 81%help choose the AI vendors their organizations buy from
- 58%have a significant or major AI budget
- 75%are buying AI and data solutions this year
- 88%call AI core or strategic
- 75%already have LLM apps in production
- No. 1AI use case: agentic systems, ahead of process automation
01 · AI priorities
88%
say AI is core or strategic to the business, with agentic systems at the top of their list.
49% call AI core to long-term innovation and operations. Agentic systems are the No. 1 priority use case at 26%, ahead of process automation (19%) and GenAI copilots and summarization (17%).
Importance of AI to business strategy, next 12 to 24 months
Highest-priority AI use case
In their words
Do not go into agentic architecture if you think that you do not have enough context.
No. 1Agentic systems are the top AI use case, ranked first out of nine
02 · Readiness
75%
have LLM apps in production, and most are still investing in their data foundation.
11% already run autonomous agents and 77% have a growing or full-stack AI/ML team. Data is the next investment: only 17% describe their data infrastructure as AI-ready, and 38% are still consolidating fragmented data.
LLM application deployment
Data infrastructure maturity
In their words
If you don’t know your own process, how are you going to train AI?
75%already have LLM applications in production
03 · Data foundation
87% vs 23%
AI-ready data is where AI scales.
87% of organizations with AI-ready data run multiple LLMs or autonomous agents, compared with 23% of those with fragmented data. 35% of AI-ready organizations already run autonomous agents.
Share running multiple LLMs or autonomous agents, by data infrastructure maturity
In their words
If you have five different definitions of revenue, you have zero definition.
4×Organizations with AI-ready data are nearly four times as likely to run multiple LLMs or agents (87% vs. 23%)
04 · Governance
40%
have organization-wide AI governance, the most common maturity level, and those organizations are scaling AI the fastest.
60% of organizations with organization-wide AI policies run multiple LLMs or agents, compared with 7% of those without formal policies. 61% of organizations with AI-ready data also have organization-wide governance.
AI governance maturity
Share running multiple LLMs or agents, by governance maturity
In their words
Governance is really not a technology problem.
8×Organizations with organization-wide governance are more than eight times as likely to run multiple LLMs or agents (60% vs. 7%)
05 · Budgets and timing
58%
have a significant AI budget, 75% are buying this year and almost half are evaluating solutions right now.
96% have money for AI in this year’s budget, and for 12% AI is a major share of annual spend. 45% are actively evaluating AI and data solutions today, including 55% of organizations where AI is a major share of spend.
AI in this year’s budget
When organizations expect to evaluate or invest
06 · Buying decisions
81%
help choose the AI vendors their organizations buy from.
They are actively in the market: 60% evaluate new AI tools several times a year or continuously. And 83% of them say finding the right vendors is a moderate or significant challenge, with 24% calling the landscape hard to navigate.
The challenge of finding the right AI vendors
How often organizations evaluate new AI tools and vendors
In their words
We can get to market faster with whatever it is we’re trying to launch if we’re not starting from zero.
83%of those who choose AI vendors say finding the right ones takes real work
07 · Finding the right fit
59%
are open to a smarter way to find AI vendors.
12% said a resource that matched them with the right AI tools and vendors would meaningfully cut evaluation time, and another 47% are open to one. matchmAIQer does that: answer 15 questions, get your AIQ score and see the providers that fit.
Interest in a resource that matches you with the right AI tools and vendors
The report
Share the findings with your team
Download the 2026 AIQ Benchmark summary as a PDF, or share it with your team.
Based on a 2026 survey of 539 enterprise data and AI decision-makers. Responses are anonymous and reported in aggregate.