Meaningful enterprise-wide impact from the use of AI is rare, but McKinsey survey results suggest that bold moves can yield big results. Organizations that are already AI high performers have much greater ambitions for the technology’s future impact. Half of these companies—defined as those that attribute at least 5 percent of EBIT to AI use—expect it to bring about transformative change to their business in the next three years, note McKinsey’s Alex Singla, Alexander Sukharevsky, Bryce Hall, Lareina Yee, Michael Chui, and coauthors. This is more than three and a half times the share of other companies, where a plurality of respondents expect only incremental changes from AI.
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A stacked bar chart compares the extent to which “AI high performers” and “All other respondents” intend to use AI to change their business in the next 3 years. The chart is divided into 5 categories: don’t know/not applicable, little or no change, incremental change, significant change, and transformative change. For “all other respondents” (n = 1,884), the percentages are 4%, 7%, 48%, 28%, and 14%, respectively. For “AI high performers” (n = 109), the percentages are 0%, 21%, 29%, and 50%, respectively, with the transformative change category 3.6 times larger than that of “all other respondents.” Note: This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool.
Source: McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI, 1,993 participants at all levels of the organization, June 25–July 29, 2025.
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