AI Spending Soars but Only 9% of Organizations Deploy It, Summit Panel Finds

At the Concordia Annual Summit on Sept. 22, leaders from ServiceNow and the World Bank Group laid bare a paradox at the heart of the global AI boom: investment is surging, but almost no one is putting AI into production. The bottleneck, they argued, is not the technology — it's the absence of trust, governance, and, for much of the world, basic digital infrastructure.

• AI experimentation doubled in one year — from 29% to 58% of enterprises — but only 9% have moved AI into production environments

• AI spending jumped 110% year-over-year with another 81% increase projected, yet returns are not keeping pace

• World Bank warns developing nations risk being left behind: internet access is below 30% in the countries the Bank serves, compared to 90%+ in advanced economies

• ServiceNow pledges to retrain 3 million people by 2027, with 2 million already completed through its AI literacy university

• World Bank report finds AI could boost 16% of jobs in developing economies — four times the share facing disruption

Why it matters: The global AI spending spree is producing a paradox — organizations are spending dramatically more on artificial intelligence but overwhelmingly failing to move it from experimentation into real-world use. The result is a widening gap between investment and value that panelists said could define who wins and loses in the next economic era.