The Zhitong Finance App learned that Deloitte China and the Artificial Intelligence, Management and Organization Research Center of the University of Hong Kong released the report “Enterprise AI Applications from the Perspective of Decision Makers” during the Yunqi Conference. The report is based on a survey of 205 business executives, covering various industries in mainland China and Hong Kong. The respondents are mainly corporate strategic decision makers, and aims to provide forward-looking insights and practical references for enterprises in the new stage of AI-driven transformation.
Research results show that the proportion of AI applications in enterprises in the production application stage continues to increase. In 2026, the share of enterprises in the AI exploration and pilot phase has dropped from 36.7% in 2025 to 24.9%, while enterprises entering the production deployment stage have risen from 56% to 64.4%. However, the increase in application scale has not simultaneously translated into a return on investment. 48.5% of the surveyed companies reported that the actual return on investment in AI projects was lower than expected. The expected return of enterprises was concentrated in the range of 10% to 25%, but the actual return achieved fell below 10%. Another 44.4% of enterprises are unable to clearly calculate the actual return on investment of AI projects, which shows that as the scope of AI applications continues to expand, the enterprise's ability to quantify value and the evaluation framework have not been improved simultaneously.
Hua Siyuan, the national partner in charge of Deloitte's consulting business in China, said that although the AI adoption rate and degree of production deployment of enterprises are constantly increasing, the popularity of AI tools does not mean that the company has completed AI transformation. Although many companies have introduced AI, they still use the original business processes and operating models, so the role of AI is often limited to improving efficiency.
Hua Siyuan further pointed out that in the next stage, the focus of enterprise competition will shift from technology adoption to value implementation. The factor that will truly open up the enterprise gap in the future is whether AI can enter core business processes, drive applications from tool superposition to workflow reshaping, and continue to form measurable and verifiable business results.