Two-thirds of IT leaders report AI results, but few would interrupt the CEO's vacation over them

The debate over an AI bubble comes down to one question: is revenue at AI labs growing fast enough to pay for the massive data-center buildout? Smaller questions hang off that one, such as how long purchased AI chips stay useful in production, where four, six or eight years change the math a lot. The most important question, though, is whether companies are getting enough real value from AI to keep buying more of it, ideally at rising prices. So far, the return on investment cannot be documented at an economy-wide level and shows up mainly in anecdotes.

A Las Vegas room of 160 IT leaders

Azeem Azhar, a British tech entrepreneur and founder of the research group Exponential View, offered one such anecdote in a podcast conversation with Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic, as reported by The Decoder. He described speaking to about 160 IT vice presidents in Las Vegas and asking who could point to measurable AI results. Two-thirds stayed standing, more than he had expected.

Azhar then pushed further and asked who has results good enough to interrupt the CEO's summer vacation. Only about eight people remained on their feet. His takeaway is that companies are making progress, but slowly, and whether that pace is fast enough to justify current investment levels remains an open question.

Ambitious boards and cheaper models

Some executives say their boards are growing more ambitious after early wins. Even in slower markets, such as Italy, Azhar heard from CEOs that trust is building and budgets are rising despite missteps along the way. At the same time, many companies are shifting away from expensive frontier models toward open-weight alternatives. In that scenario, AI usage might keep growing while the bubble still bursts, because not enough money flows back to fund the buildout.

Azhar points to what he calls the "bear version of the story": a Boston Consulting Group survey found that about 70 percent of CEOs worldwide say AI success matters for how they are perceived in their roles, which gives them an incentive to paint a rosier picture than reality warrants. Azhar stresses that he has no simple answer to the bubble question either and describes the situation as "finely balanced."