CIOs Winning the AI Race Know When to Slow Down
InformationWeek, Wednesday, October 21st, 2026
Gartner finds the 11% of CIOs getting the best AI results set firm stopping points at the pilot and production stages.
Gartner's annual survey of 2,002 CIOs found that only 11% are both improving business outcomes and proving AI value, and those leaders tend to set two stopping points in the AI lifecycle, at pilot and at production.
CIOs with guidelines for when a pilot should not move to production were 2.3 times more likely to be in that group, and those with policies for abandoning low-value AI already in production were 2.6 times more likely.
Only 31% and 17% of CIOs, respectively, have such policies.
Gartner's Alicia Mullery said leading CIOs are shifting from scaling everything to scaling value, with the discipline to quit and redirect resources.