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Claim check

“Only 13% of companies are ready for AI”

The number is in the source. The population is not “companies”: Cisco surveyed leaders at organizations with 500 or more employees. Smaller firms are not in it.

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The source exists, but the claim gets the year, the population or the wording wrong.

The claim

Only 13% of companies are ready for AI, according to Cisco’s AI Readiness Index.

What the primary source says

Cisco has published the index each year since 2023.

  • 2023. The report says the index “is based on a double-blind survey of 8,161 senior business leaders at organizations with 500 or more employees” in 30 markets. It sorts organizations into four groups. The top group, called Pacesetters and described as “fully prepared”, was 14%.
  • 2024. Cisco’s press release says: “Only 13% of companies today are fully ready to capture AI’s potential – down from 14% a year ago.” The survey covered 7,985 senior business leaders, again at organizations with 500 or more employees in 30 markets.
  • 2025. Cisco’s page for the 2025 edition says Pacesetters have been “about 13% of organizations worldwide for the last three years”.

The score comes from 49 indicators in six areas: strategy, infrastructure, data, governance, talent and culture. Infrastructure carries the most weight (25%) and culture the least (10%).

What is wrong with the claim

  • “Companies” is too broad. Every organization in the survey has at least 500 employees. The index says nothing about small and medium-sized firms.
  • It is a self-report. Leaders answered about their own organizations. Studies of readiness models warn that such scores mainly record what senior managers think.
  • “Ready” is Cisco’s definition. It means a score of 86 or more out of 100 on Cisco’s own weighted scale. Cisco sells AI infrastructure, and infrastructure has the largest weight.
  • The questionnaire is not public. Nobody outside can check how the questions were asked.
  • National figures differ and move a lot. Country reports give their own percentages, and they change from year to year. A national figure should be quoted with its year.

It is a large, consistent survey of big organizations. It has not been shown to predict results. See do not treat a maturity score as a forecast.

What to cite instead

In Cisco’s 2024 AI Readiness Index, a survey of 7,985 senior business leaders at organizations with 500 or more employees in 30 markets, 13% of organizations were classed as fully ready for AI, down from 14% in 2023.

Sources

  1. Cisco (2024). Cisco’s 2024 AI Readiness Index: Urgency Rises, Readiness Falls. Press release, 19 November 2024. investor.cisco.com
  2. Cisco (2023). Cisco AI Readiness Index: Intentions Outpacing Abilities. Global report. cisco.com
  3. Cisco (2025). Cisco AI Readiness Index 2025: Realizing the Value of AI. cisco.com
  4. Silva, São Mamede and Santos (2024). A new proposed model to assess the digital organizational readiness to maximize the results of the digital transformation in SMEs. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 10(1), 100644. What this study did and found
  5. Thordsen and Bick (2023). A decade of digital maturity models: much ado about nothing?. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 21(4), 947–976. What this study did and found