AI Survey: The Pulse of AI Spend & Strategy

Research evidence excerpt

AI Survey: The Pulse of AI Spend & Strategy

Software July 9, 2026

John DiFucci

john.difucci@guggenheimpartners.com AI Survey: The Pulse of AI Spend & Strategy

212 518 9670

Jacob Smith Key Message: As a follow-on to our recent AI report titled:"AI: Still Early, But Not Too

jacob.smith@guggenheimpartners.com Early", we publish the full results from our survey of 150 large enterprise IT professionals 212 518 9286 focused on AI strategy. We conclude that AI budgets and use cases are still evolving, and

Richard Magnus while it’s clear that large enterprises see AI as an important technology that they must

richard.magnus@guggenheimpartners.com embrace, they are still trying to figure out how best to do that effectively and efficiently.

212 518 9308 They also realize that while some AI spending will come from existing IT budgets, they

Tamjid Chowdhury also plan to spend incremental dollars beyond current IT sources. A clear majority have

tamjid.chowdhury@guggenheimpartners.com already deployed AI agents, but a minority have secured them, and AI is resulting in

212 823 6739 only a modest 2.5% reduction in employee headcount. Most AI spend is allocated to

Blake Musumano Software Dev, IT Ops, Data Analytics/BI, and Customer Service. Within infrastructure

blake.musumano@guggenheimpartners.com Software, there's most AI risk to traditional Analytics, Observability, and Dev Software,

212 518 9468 while Security appears the most insulated from AI displacement. A third of respondents

say AI has reduced their needs for developers. Within Applications, participants see CRM Lawrence Vensko

lawrence.vensko@guggenheimpartners.com and ITSM most at risk, while Payroll HCM, and CCaaS are less exposed. Most expect