Pay attention to this one. Only 5% of GenAI initiatives are driving real revenue growth. The other 95% are spinning their wheels.
MIT's new report, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, makes a hard observation that matches what many of us are seeing in the field:
GenAI hype is easy. GenAI ROI is rare.
Here's what separates the leaders from the laggards:
The four divides
- Solve one pain point well, partner smartly. The top performers aren't trying to AI-ify every workflow. They pick one and they ship it.
- Enterprises building solo succeed at one-third the rate of those who partner with focused vendors. DIY is the most expensive path.
- Most GenAI budgets are flowing into sales and marketing tools — but the highest ROI is showing up in back-office automation. Where the budget goes and where the value lives are different rooms.
- You can't deploy a single AI without thinking about the whole process. This is the line I keep coming back to in every Aventary conversation: process re-architecture is the deployment.
The takeaway
The problem isn't model quality. It's enterprise integration and the learning gap inside the org. If your AI strategy stops at "we got a pilot live," you're already in the 95%.