More than eight out of ten executives see value when implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into their businesses. Almost all of those surveyed in a new Google Cloud report stated that AI agents enable both cost savings and revenue growth.
The research identified 26% of enterprises as “AI ROI Leaders”, with financial returns from AI initiatives accelerating year-on-year. A further 58% reported steadily increasing returns. This is according to Google Cloud’s latest AI report, From token-maxxing to ROI, which found more people want information on how to ensure AI provides a return on investment (ROI).
Oliver Parker, vice president of AI at Google Cloud, says executives are seeing value from AI as they scale revenue or output without proportionally increasing operating costs.
Says Kim Schulze, Head of Digital Advisory Practice at Accelera Digital Group (ADG), “More than half of respondents say that AI has already caused a significant or transformational change to their organisation’s operating model, which shows that ROI has become top of mind for the C-Suite.”
“We are seeing a desire to demystify AI and make it practical. AI is moving from a technology experiment to being used to remove friction, transform existing processes and create measurable business impact.”
Schulze adds that “enterprise AI rapidly went from pilot to production to delivering value, and organisations are measuring AI’s value against its costs”.
Ongoing investment
The biggest signal of ROI is continued investment, with 97% of respondents planning to increase AI spending in the next fiscal year. Expected returns are led by AI-powered analytics and decision intelligence, workflow automation, customer-facing experiences, and data and infrastructure modernisation.
“While some were discussing AI trends, the AI ROI Leaders were hard at work getting more value from AI. The most useful role for AI is often not to replace people or make the final decision. Instead, they use it to augment people, speed up decisions, grow revenue from new products or services, increase productivity, and accelerate innovation,” says Schulze.
“The practical lesson is to keep the challenge narrow and simple: identify the friction point, define the business outcome, prioritise rigorously based on value potential and then implement the simplest solution that can deliver impact. Complexity is not a measure of value.”
Google Cloud’s AI ROI study is mirrored in PwC’s AI performance report, which found that the top 20% of 1,217 large companies surveyed globally, including 85 in Africa, capture 74% of AI-driven financial returns. These leaders focus AI on growth and reinvention, build fit-for-purpose foundations and embed the technology across the enterprise, PwC found.
Yet, Africa trails AI leaders across every major dimension of AI-driven performance, suggesting that the challenge is not adoption, but execution at scale, says PwC. “The opportunity for the region is not to do more AI. It is to scale the right AI, deliberately and decisively.”
PwC also found that 82% of organisations in Africa have participated in AI pilots, but comparatively fewer are scaling it across the enterprise or using it to unlock new sources of value. Some 23% of CEOs who have invested in AI reported revenue increases, while 25% found cost reductions over the past year.
The search for answers
Google’s research shows a progression towards understanding ROI. In April, YouTube searches for “AI ROI” overtook “how to use AI” for the first time. This followed a 1,400% increase in Google searches for “AI ROI” in the 12 months to August 2025.
Earlier, “gen AI” searches had increased 800% in the year to January 2024, while “how to use AI” jumped 160% in December 2022. By June 2026, searches for “token efficiency” had risen 335% during the first half of the year.
“As a result, the natural progression of AI in business will be determined by a keen understanding of how and where AI is driving ROI,” says Schulze.
“Over time, the real advantage comes from creating a culture where teams continuously identify opportunities, test focused AI interventions, and measure whether they are improving business outcomes.”
Google Cloud partnered with National Research Group to survey 2,403 executives globally, analysing 297,782 question responses across industry, geography, company size and AI adoption stage. It found a cohort of ROI Leaders, who make up a quarter of respondents and stand out in three areas: decision-making authority, AI capability development, and embedding AI into the business.
Quicker route to answers
Almost half (48%) describe ownership and decision-making authority for AI agent initiatives as “extremely clear,” against 27% of other organisations. Some 38% have ongoing AI capability development embedded into roles with required training, compared with 18% of their peers.
“Faster decision-making has surpassed increased productivity as the top-cited measurable outcome driven by AI investments,” says Schulze. “This is an important distinction: AI can accelerate analysis, surface options and reduce the time it takes to get to an answer, while people retain accountability for judgement and the final decision.”
Operational performance improvements are the primary measure of AI success for 36% of respondents, followed by direct financial outcomes at 21% and strategic business key performance indicators at 18%.
For Schulze, this reinforces the need to start with business impact rather than the technology itself: “The question should not be ‘where can we use AI?’, but ‘which business outcome are we trying to improve, where is the friction today, and what is the simplest intervention that can move the measure?”
Article By Kim Schulze, Accelera Digital Group Head of Digital Advisory Practice
