--- title: "Companies ramp up AI spend, but most pilots fail to deploy: Lenovo executive" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/279140032.md" description: "Global businesses are investing heavily in AI, with 96% planning to increase spending over the next year, despite a 90% failure rate in pilot deployments, according to Lenovo's Ken Wong. The average budget growth is expected to exceed 13%, with 93% of organizations anticipating positive returns. However, many companies are still a year away from large-scale adoption, favoring hybrid models for AI workloads. Sectors like software engineering and banking are leading in adoption, while Lenovo's Solutions & Services Group reported a 30% profit surge, highlighting the growing demand for AI infrastructure." datetime: "2026-03-15T04:05:49.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/279140032.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/279140032.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/279140032.md) --- # Companies ramp up AI spend, but most pilots fail to deploy: Lenovo executive Global businesses are pouring billions into artificial intelligence amid a growing fear of missing out on enterprise AI strategies, according to Ken Wong, president of Lenovo’s Solutions & Services Group (SSG). However, despite projections of massive financial returns, the vast majority of these initiatives were not deemed a success, he added. Wong, whose division helps businesses build and maintain AI infrastructure, estimated more than 90 per cent of these pilots fail to reach satisfactory deployment: a failure rate that stands in stark contrast to the booming optimism around the technology. According to a recent report by Lenovo, which includes a survey of 3,120 tech and business leaders, 96 per cent of polled organisations said they planned to increase their AI spending over the next 12 months. This widespread investment is expected to drive average budget growth of more than 13 per cent. Executives are banking heavily on these investments paying off. The survey found that 93 per cent of organisations anticipated a positive return on their AI initiatives, projecting an average return of US$2.79 in value for every dollar spent. “But readiness remains a challenge,” Wong said at a conference on Tuesday. That readiness gap is particularly evident in the realm of enterprise agentic AI. While more than half of the surveyed organisations are actively exploring or deploying the technology, the report suggested that most companies remained at least a year away from large-scale adoption. More than eight in 10 businesses now favoured a hybrid approach instead of cloud-only models, opting to keep their AI workloads on local servers or at the network edges where data was collected, according to the report. Sectors and functions that handle massive volumes of data tend to adopt enterprise AI faster. Wong noted that software engineering, customer service, smart manufacturing and banking were among the sectors currently leading adoption. The rush to build AI capabilities is also boosting demand for infrastructure providers such as Lenovo. Operating profits for the company’s SSG arm surged 30 per cent year on year, on 18 per cent revenue growth, for the last quarter of 2025. With an operating margin of 22.5 per cent, the division remains Lenovo’s most profitable business. ### Related Stocks - [00992.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/00992.HK.md) - [RSPT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/RSPT.US.md) - [FTXL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/FTXL.US.md) - [PSI.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/PSI.US.md) - [SOXX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXX.US.md) - [LNVGY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/LNVGY.US.md) - [XLK.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/XLK.US.md) - [SOXQ.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SOXQ.US.md) - [SMH.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SMH.US.md) - [XSD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/XSD.US.md) - [IXN.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IXN.US.md) ## Related News & Research - [Lenovo deploys AI data agent for marketing, UX, e-commerce](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282594088.md) - [14:10 ETSupermicro versnelt de implementatietijd met nieuwe enterprise-serveroplossingen uit de Gold-serie](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282376525.md) - [The AI Stock Wall Street Can't Stop Talking About in 2026](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282407351.md) - [How ServiceNow gets customers to gorge at the AI trough](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282585116.md) - [The CPU Renaissance in the Age of AI](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282540976.md)