At a glance
- Source
- McKinsey & Company (2025). The State of AI: Global Survey 2025. McKinsey Global Survey, published 5 November 2025. web.archive.org · Not peer-reviewed: other researchers have not yet checked it for a journal.
- How it was done
- An online survey run from 25 June to 29 July 2025. Respondents answered about their own organizations. Survey. People answered questions once. It shows what goes together, not what causes what.
- Who took part
- 1,993 participants from 105 countries, across regions, industries and company sizes. 38% work for organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
- Where
- Worldwide.
What it found
- Wide use, little profit. 88% of respondents said their organization uses AI in at least one business function. About 6% qualified as “AI high performers”: they attribute 5% or more of operating profit (EBIT) to AI and say they have seen significant value.
- Workflow redesign. High performers were nearly three times as likely as others to say they had rebuilt individual workflows from the ground up. Of 31 practices tested, this was one of the strongest markers of a high performer.
- Leaders who own it. High performers were three times more likely to strongly agree that senior leaders show ownership of and commitment to AI.
- Human checks. High performers were more likely to have defined when AI output must be checked by a person.
- Risks. 51% of respondents from organizations using AI reported at least one negative consequence. The most common was inaccurate output.
When the result holds
The findings describe what high performers say they do differently. They show what goes together. They do not show that redesigning workflows causes higher profit.
Limits
- Every figure is reported by the respondents themselves. The profit figures were not checked independently.
- McKinsey sells AI consulting. The survey is not peer-reviewed.
- Surveys designed to represent all firms find far lower use: about 18–20% of US firms in the Census Bureau’s survey, and 69% in a central-bank survey of executives in four countries. The 88% describes the people who answered this survey.
Practices that use this study
This study supports:
- Name one accountable AI owner Give one named senior person the responsibility for AI: priorities, budget, risk and results. Shared responsibility tends to mean nobody decides. Do first · Effort: low (days, one person)
- Redesign the workflow instead of adding a tool to it Giving people an AI tool inside an unchanged process changes little. Decide again who does each step, in what order, and where a person checks. Do next · Effort: high (months, several teams)