The performance gap between AI leaders and laggards is widening fast with agentic AI emerging as a powerful force shaping future-built companies. Globally, 5% of companies qualify as “future-built” for AI. These firms are at the forefront of AI innovation, systematically building cutting-edge AI capabilities across functions and consistently generating substantial value. In contrast, 35% (“scalers”) are scaling up their efforts and beginning to generate value, but many of them admit that they could be moving faster. The remaining 60% of organisations (“laggards”) report minimal revenue and cost gains and don’t yet have the proper capabilities for scaling AI in place.
These are among the findings from a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) The Widening AI Value Gap: Build for the Future 2025. Based on a global survey of 1,250 senior executives and AI decision makers across nine industries and more than 25 sectors, the study assesses AI maturity across 41 foundational capabilities, covering strategy, tech, people, innovation, and outcomes.
“AI is reshaping the business landscape far faster than previous technology waves,” said Nicolas de Bellefonds, a managing director and senior partner and global leader of BCG’s AI efforts, and a coauthor of the report. “The companies that are capturing real value from AI aren’t just automating—they’re reshaping and reinventing how their businesses work. And they’re pulling away.”
The Expanding Value Gap
Leading companies that moved early enjoy outsized benefits across financial and operational fronts, and this performance gap is widening. Future-built firms plan to spend more than twice as much on AI compared to laggards in 2025. As a result of this investment, they expect twice the revenue increase and 40% greater cost reductions than laggards in the areas where they apply AI.
Further, BCG’s analysis shows that compared to laggards, future-built companies achieve substantial value across multiple dimensions, including 1.7x revenue growth, 3.6x three-year total shareholder return (TSR), and 1.6x EBIT margin.
Agentic AI Accelerates the Value Gap
A key driver of this widening gap is the rise of agentic AI. Unlike traditional models, agentic systems learn, reason, and act autonomously to solve complex, multistep problems. According to the survey, agents already account for 17% of total AI value in 2025, and that share is expected to reach 29% by 2028. Agents are playing a key role in expanding the value gap between future-built firms and their slower rivals. Future-built companies allocate 15% of their AI budgets to agents. A third of these firms use agents, compared with 12% of scalers and almost none of laggards.
“Agentic AI isn’t a future concept—it’s already reshaping workflows and redefining roles. Companies should view it as the next step in scaling AI, not as the starting point,” said Amanda Luther, a managing director and senior partner at BCG and a coauthor of the report. “Agents represent a huge opportunity but aren’t simply plug-and-play: companies urgently need to redesign how work gets done, addressing the impact of agents on existing processes, roles, and skills.”
AI Value Is Concentrated in the Core
AI maturity has advanced across sectors with software, telecommunications, and payments and fintech companies leading the pack. Fashion and luxury, chemicals, and construction remain at the lower end of the AI maturity curve.
Across sectors, the report finds that 70% of AI’s potential value is concentrated in core business functions such as sales and marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, and pricing. The big exception is IT, with a 13% share of AI value.
A Proven Playbook
BCG’s research shows that regardless of sector or size of enterprise, future-built companies follow a well-defined and proven playbook, rooted in an AI-first operating model, to generate value and expand their advantage. The playbook has five strategies:
- Lead from the top with an aggressive multiyear strategic AI ambition
- Reshape and invent the business with value-based prioritization of AI initiatives and rigorous tracking of results
- Unlock to an AI-first operating model rooted in human-machine augmentation and collaboration
- Secure and enable the necessary talent by anticipating new needs, leveraging the supplier ecosystem, and tenaciously upskilling people
- Build a fit-for-purpose technology architecture and data foundation
The playbook is a roadmap that the other 95% of companies can use to build AI maturity and achieve value at scale. But these trailing firms, especially the 60% that have little or no value to show for their investment in AI so far, need to move fast or risk being left in the wake of this latest powerful wave of digital disruption.
Adham Abouzied, Managing Director and Partner, BCG Cairo, highlights the regional opportunity, “Many of our clients struggle to envision what a successful roadmap looks like in the generative AI and agentic AI era. This report fills that critical gap by providing clear insights into the strategies used by the select few companies, just 5%, that have successfully created substantial value from AI.”
“The shift toward rethinking RPA and customer journeys from an AI-first perspective represents a significant transformation. However, beginning this AI journey is essential. IT functions offer an ideal starting point, providing lower risk and fewer constraints compared to other business areas while delivering substantial returns, accounting for 13% of all AI-generated value to date. The good news is that the playbook followed by future-built companies is clearly delineated and available to all,” concludes Adham.
ENDS
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