Eighty eight per cent of enterprises intend to increase their AI spend in 2025.
That's one of the key findings from Vultr's new industry report titled 'The New Battleground: Unlocking the Power of AI Maturity with Multi-Model AI'.
The study has revealed a clear correlation between an organisation's AI maturity and its ability to achieve better business outcomes, outpacing industry peers in revenue growth, market share, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Of the respondents surveyed, almost three-quarters (72 per cent) are at higher levels of maturity of AI use.
"As organisations worldwide capitalise on strategic investments in AI, we wanted to look at the state of AI maturity," said Kevin Cochrane, CMO of Vultr's parent company, Constant. "What we’ve found is that transformational organisations are winning the hearts, minds, and share of wallets while also improving their operating margins. AI maturity is the new competitive weapon, and businesses must invest now to accelerate AI models, training, and scaling in production."
The report found, on average, the number of distinct AI models that are operational stands at 158, with projections suggesting this number will rise to 176 AI models within the next year. This growth highlights remarkable acceleration in AI adoption across industries, underscored by the 89 per cent of organisations anticipating advanced AI use within two years.
AI is poised to permeate throughout the enterprise, with 80 per cent adoption anticipated across all business functions within 24 months. This will include AI being embedded across all applications and business units.
According to the report, those with transformational AI practices reported that they outperformed their peers at higher levels. Specifically, 50 per cent of transformational companies are performing "significantly better" against industry peers than those at operational levels, while a large majority of AI-driven organisations said that they improved their 2022/2023 year-over-year performance in customer satisfaction (90 per cent), revenue (91 per cent), cost reduction/margin expansion (88 per cent), risk (87 per cent), marketing (89 per cent), and market share (89 per cent). Almost half (40 per cent to 45 per cent) of organisations also said that AI is having a "major" impact on market share, revenue, customer satisfaction, marketing improvements, and cost and risk reduction.
"AI's transformative impact is undeniable—it's devouring industries and is becoming ubiquitous in every facet of business operations. This necessitates a new era of technology, underpinned by a composable stack and platform engineering to effectively scale these innovations,” said Cochrane.
To fully harness AI's potential, 88 per cent of the enterprises surveyed intend to increase their AI spend in 2025 with 49 per cent expecting moderate to significant increases.
"For years the hyperscalers have dominated the infrastructure market, relying on scale, resources, and technological expertise, but that is all about to change," added Cochrane. "Over the next decade, everything will be rebuilt with AI at the core, with organisations integrating the principles of cloud engineering into their operations. As a result, we will see the rise of AI specialists and independents as they empower organisations to do transformative work and gain a competitive edge."
As the race to AI heats up, it will not be without its share of obstacles. Budget limitations, building or obtaining AI algorithms, lack of skilled personnel and data quality are among the top hurdles organisations said that they must resolve to graduate to the next stage of AI maturity.
For those at a transformational level of maturity, governance (30 per cent) becomes much more of an issue, while company culture is the larger issue for those still in the accelerating stage.