Only 20% of companies capture most AI value – PwC

A PwC AI performance findings has revealed that only a small group of companies are extracting the bulk of business value from artificial intelligence investments, despite widespread corporate spending on the technology.

The PwC’s report titled ‘Decoding ROI from AI in Africa’ noted that just 20 percent of companies account for 74 percent of all AI-driven value creation, which highlights a widening gap between businesses successfully scaling Artificial Intelligence and those still struggling to achieve measurable returns.

The report found that leading organisations are moving beyond using AI for basic productivity improvements and are instead applying the technology to drive growth, redesign operations, and create new business opportunities.

PwC described these firms as ‘AI leaders,’ noting that they are twice as likely as their peers to embed AI across their entire value chains, from corporate strategy and procurement to customer experience and back-office functions.

“The companies that are winning are not thinking about AI as a chatbot or going after robotic process automation,” Scott Likens, PwC’s global chief AI engineer, said in the report. “They’re fundamentally rewiring their processes, using data differently, and unleashing the power of autonomous agents.”

The study showed that the most ‘AI fit’ organisations recorded a 7.2 times higher AI-driven performance boost compared with competitors, combining gains in revenue growth and cost reduction.

PwC said these companies tend to prioritise AI investments that are directly tied to measurable business outcomes rather than deploying isolated experimental projects.

The report also highlighted the importance of strong technological foundations. Companies achieving the highest AI returns were more than twice as likely to modernise legacy systems, build reusable AI assets, and establish enterprise-wide data infrastructure.

PwC noted that businesses successfully scaling AI also invest heavily in workforce training. Top-performing firms were found to be 1.7 times more likely to provide continuous, role-based AI learning programmes for employees.

PwC cited several case studies where AI deployment delivered measurable operational gains. It cited automaker Lucid reduced forecasting cycle times from weeks to less than a minute after implementing AI-powered finance tools. Another enterprise reportedly cut customer service call times by 25 percent using AI-enabled support systems.

The report suggests that the next phase of AI competition will centre less on experimentation and more on how effectively businesses integrate AI into core operations and long-term growth strategies.