Businesses are still in the early stages of exploring how artificial intelligence can help their organizations, but that isn’t stopping them from making significant investments in the technology. These findings come from a new Nasdaq 2026 Outlook Survey, which asked CEOs, board chairs, senior executives and executives what they think about AI and the economy. The survey reveals that despite significant institutional investments in AI, only 5% of executives believe their organization is AI native. The vast majority, 71%, classify themselves as either “beginners” or “explorers” when it comes to AI readiness.
The top three areas where executives are seeing the greatest progress toward AI adoption are product development, anti-fraud and anti-money laundering, and compliance and risk management.
When it comes to barriers to increased adoption of AI, business leaders highlighted several major internal hurdles: uncertain ROI, the need to address tech debt and legacy technologies, and concerns about governance or compliance. Externally, respondents said tool maturity, regulatory complexity and cost concerns were the top three barriers to greater adoption.
Here are some key findings from the survey: Access the full survey by filling out the form at the end of this article:
Investing in AI
On average, executives report spending a fifth of their technology budget on AI initiatives. However, there is significant variation between organizations: 31% say less than 10% of their technology budget is spent on AI, while 12% of respondents say at least half of their budget is spent on AI.
According to the survey, not all business functions are seeing equal adoption of AI. Financial institutions are seeing the greatest adoption of AI within product development, fraud detection, and compliance teams. At the same time, the use of AI in trading showed an interesting distribution: one in four institutions have already scaled and deployed AI solutions within this function, while a good half are still on the starting line.
When it comes to how companies plan to use technology, the survey found that addressing innovation and compliance issues is one of the main elements of AI strategy.
The early days of AI adoption
Despite these significant investments, 71% of respondents said their staff is still in the early stages of AI readiness. The survey grouped organizations into four categories:
- 22% are beginners: they are learning about the capabilities, benefits and risks of AI, but have not yet adopted AI in their organization.
- 49% are explorers: at the beginning of the adoption phase, they begin to integrate AI functionalities into certain products or business areas.
- 25% are adopters: have a fairly good grasp of AI capabilities, with varying levels of adoption and implementation.
- 5% are leaders: fully AI native
The impact of AI
When asked what they think the long-term impact of AI on the economy will be, 63% of respondents said they think it will be “scalable,” meaning it will have a significant impact, but not as transformative as some hoped.
30% of executives said they actually expected AI to transform every aspect of our economy, while only 6% said the impact would be negligible.
What happens after an AI bubble
Regardless of the ultimate impact of AI technology, 87% of respondents said they believe there is currently a bubble in the AI industry. Yet only 11% of executives said they expected this to lead to a major setback in the short to medium term.
After a bubble bursts, the most likely outcome would be “significant” consolidation in the AI sector, according to 70% of respondents.
Expectations for 2026
Looking at the broader macroeconomic outlook, a large majority of institutional executives are optimistic about both global growth (68%) and their own companies’ (79%) prospects in 2026, with most expecting “moderate” growth in both categories.
In fact, only 3% of executives rated the coming year as “high risk,” while 69% described their assessment as “neutral,” “cautious optimism” or “strong optimism.”
When asked what would have the biggest impact on economic performance this year, the top three answers were:
- 38%: Improved geopolitical relations and trade stability
- 25%: Inflation control and price stability
- 14%: improved consumer confidence
View the full results of the Nasdaq 2026 Outlook Survey here by completing the form below.