CEOs are moving beyond vaguely embracing AI to using it to reinvent operating models and people strategy to drive dynamism.
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AI dominates all conversations in the C-suite
CEOs are prioritizing growth and see AI as defining the competitive landscape, according to the 2025 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey. While this may sound similar to CEOs' bullish stance in last year’s survey, CEOs have undergone a pivotal shift in how they view AI over the past twelve months. Far from just a tool, CEOs now see AI as transformative for creating dynamic capacity in core areas of the organization, including for retooling operating models and people strategies. Making that work will require everyone — including members of the C-Suite — to increase their AI savviness.
AI moves deeper into the business
CEOs want to use AI beyond traditional pathways like cost cutting and product development. Generating new revenue streams and adding AI capabilities to operational processes are key ambitions with implications for people development and leadership.
CEOs are prioritizing change in key operational areas
Operationally, machines are gaining the autonomy to make their own decisions, take actions and execute instantaneously. Yet this autonomous operating environment doesn’t align with the enterprise business or operating models of today.
Only about one-third of CEOs have an operating and business model fit for an AI-driven world, meaning roughly two-thirds do not. Executive leaders are taking steps to change that in several key operational areas.
Specifically, a third or more CEOs plan, over the next three years, to deploy and use systems with the potential to be 100% automated in operational areas such as:
Logistics and distribution
New product and service design and production
Contract creation and execution
Still, about one-in-four CEOs say they have no plans to fully automate any systems and processes. This will place their organizations at a considerable strategic disadvantage which they will struggle to recover from.
AI meets talent and management planning
CEOs want to use technologies — especially AI but also robotics — to imagine a new workforce. AI-enabled systems are now working alongside and sometimes instead of humans. An exclusively human workforce is a thing of the past.
Sixty-eight percent of CEOs are developing strategies that integrate human employees and machines, including AI agents and robots. Their top three priorities are:
Taking rote, repetitive tasks and shifting them to machines and technology.
Aligning human and technology contributions to key business processes.
Upskilling human employees to fully utilize AI-enabled machines.
It is not only individual contributors who will be affected. More than half of CEOs said they will use AI within the next five years to de-layer middle management roles. Here, the goals are also multi-fold and include using AI to reduce decision-making friction and give remaining managers the capacity they need to improve productivity and operational efficiency.
Achieving AI success requires upskilling — for everyone
As part of the broader effort to transform the operating environment to enable the business to be AI-fit-for-purpose, CEOs are putting greater emphasis on upskilling. Success used to hinge solely on acquiring external human talent. It now requires acquiring AI-enabled capabilities to equip the existing workforce with the necessary skills to build dynamic capacity into everyday operations.
That includes equipping existing executive leaders. CEOs perceive significant skill gaps in their C-level team members, including their CIOs. The gaps related to AI are even wider than those CEOs saw in digital transformation readiness at the end of the 2010s.
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AI for CEOs FAQs
What do CEOs think about AI?
CEOs believe AI defines today’s competitive landscape. Much as the period from 1980 to 1995 was the era of IT-supported business, 1995 to 2010 was the era of e-business, and 2010 to 2025 the era of digital business, we are entering into the AI era. During this time, organizations will use AI to transform their operations and business models to be more dynamic and execute with greater autonomy. This means the era from 2025 on will be categorized as one of autonomous business.
What are leaders saying about AI?
Business leaders believe that AI will significantly impact their business over the next three years, as organizations invest heavily in AI to fully transform every part of their value chain. Yet the impact of AI will not come from AI alone, but also from its application in combination with enabling technologies such as digital twins, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine customers.
Will managers be replaced by AI?
CEOs do not necessarily want to replace managers with AI, but rather to implement and integrate technology-enabled mechanisms so that managers can improve productivity and operational efficiency. One way to do that is to leverage AI to increase the span of control managers have over the workforce, enabling a single manager to oversee approximately 20% more employees. With AI, managers could also, for example, eliminate performance reviews or forced rankings due to AI-enabled real-time feedback, implement new generative AI persona coaching and communication systems, and reduce compliance activities that AI could conduct autonomously.
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