Large corporations around the world are rushing to deploy artificial intelligence (AI), but a critical bottleneck is stalling their progress. According to a global study from the VivaTech conference, a sharp disconnect has emerged between widespread AI adoption and corporate readiness, leaving billions of dollars in potential value untapped.
While AI has quickly become an everyday tool inside corporate offices, most legacy enterprises have failed to modernize the internal systems, workflows, and operating models required to capitalize on the technology, according to the 2026 Global Enterprise AI Report.
Data from the report – published by digital business transformation company Publicis Sapient, which surveyed 1,550 AI decision-makers globally – found 73% of respondents use AI regularly across most business processes. However, a mere 10% said AI is essential to how their business operates.
Though 47% believe AI is fully capable of meeting today’s business needs, nearly as many (42%) admit their organizations are simply not structured to capture its value. Furthermore, only 38% report that AI is fundamentally changing their business operations.
“The enterprise was not designed for the speed, scale, and autonomy that AI makes possible,” Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz said. “Many organizations have successfully deployed AI, but deployment alone does not create advantage. The winners will be the companies that redesign how work gets done, modernize their operations, and embed AI into the fabric of the business.”
The report also highlights deep regional disparities in how countries are navigating this technological shift.
The United Kingdom currently leads the world in AI-driven business transformation, with 51% of leaders saying the technology is fundamentally changing how their businesses operate. Conversely, the United States represents the fastest adopters but faces the biggest organizational wake-up call; 34% of U.S. executives cite internal organizational design as their primary constraint.
In Europe, the hurdles are different. French corporations suffer from severe data constraints, with 51% pointing to internal data limitations as their main barrier. Germany boasts high workplace adoption, frequently viewing AI as an automated colleague, yet only 10% have fully integrated the technology across the entire enterprise. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates shows rapid, eager coordination across teams, but a minuscule 5% have achieved full enterprise-wide integration.
Looking ahead, corporate ambitions are heavily outpacing operational reality. In the U.S., 71% of executives expect to significantly scale AI over the next two years, yet only 20% believe their organizations are equipped to handle that growth today.
Separately at the VivaTech conference in Paris, Publicis Chairman Maurice Lévy called on France and Germany to spearhead a pan-European AI fund, citing the bloc’s reliance on American tech giants leaves European companies highly vulnerable to sudden service disruptions. Lévy proposed the creation of a €100 billion ($115 billion) fund dedicated to backing AI initiatives across the continent.
Lévy described the initiative as a necessary response to a recent “shock” within the European business sector, in which companies reportedly lost access overnight to advanced frontier models developed by Anthropic. Without a sovereign European alternative, he warned, domestic industries remain dangerously exposed to foreign providers capable of cutting off access to critical AI infrastructure without notice.
Neither Anthropic nor representatives from the French and German ministries were immediately available for comment.
Indeed, as the corporate world moves past the initial wave of AI experimentation, the report concludes that technology acquisition is no longer the metric for success. Instead, the ultimate winners of the AI race will be decided by operational adaptation — specifically, how quickly companies can dismantle legacy systems and redesign their workflows around automated intelligence.
