Only 25% of workers are using AI. Here’s how tech leaders are changing that.

Only 25% of workers use AI regularly as part of their job—even though 86% of CEOs think their people are ready for it, according to this year’s CEO study from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV).

“Rewiring the C-suite: The fast track to 2030,” which surveyed more than 2,000 chief executives globally, makes the picture sharper. Eighty-three percent of CEOs said they believe AI success depends more on people’s adoption than on the technology itself. So leaders know that AI matters, and they believe in their people, and yet three quarters of their workforce still isn’t regularly using AI.

The C-suite is responding. The study found that 76% of organizations now have a Chief AI Officer, up from 26% only a year ago. Fifty-nine percent of CEOs expect the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO)’s influence will increase over the next few years, and 77% believe talent and technology leadership roles are converging.

“The key is to make AI the standard operating layer inside the tools employees already use,” Ganesh Harinath, Founder and CEO of Fiducia AI, told IBM Think on the forum floor at Think 2026 this month. “Once that happens, adoption will accelerate dramatically, because employees are no longer experimenting with AI as an optional tool. They are using AI as part of the normal way work gets done.”

At his own company, Harinath added, more than 95% of work is supported by AI-powered tools, and more than 90% of code is generated or accelerated using AI-assisted development.

The study found that organizations that redesigned five core business areas—technology, finance, HR, operations and cross-functional collaboration—were four times more likely to have delivered on business objectives. It also found that organizations with an AI-first approach to C-suite design scaled 10% more AI initiatives enterprise-wide than their peers.

The 2030 timeline adds some pressure. CEOs said they expect AI to make 48% of operational decisions without human intervention by that year, compared to 25% today, particularly where consistency and guardrails can be codified. And between now and 2028, they think 29% of employees will need reskilling for a different role, with another 53% requiring upskilling to do their current one more effectively.

Then again, there may be a path to making that timeline work. “AI adoption will not continue as slow, linear growth,” Harinath said. “Once enterprises standardize on approved AI platforms and embed them into core workflows, adoption can become exponential.”