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The lowest-ranked concerns
Ask industrial CEOs what worries them most, and the answer is not artificial intelligence. It’s turbulence—regulatory changes, geopolitical conflict, and recession risks. In Bain’s 2026 CEO Survey, AI and cybersecurity barely made the list of top concerns for industrial CEOs, cited as a top-three threat by only 5% and 10%, respectively.
Industrial CEOs are betting AI can improve performance
But the fact that they’re not worrying about it doesn’t mean industrial CEOs don’t care about AI. They just see it differently: 86% of industrial CEOs are prioritizing AI for near-term cost reduction and productivity improvement. AI is less a discrete external threat than an execution challenge inside the business to make it more competitive. Can the company turn new technology into lower costs, faster decisions, stronger resilience, and measurable performance improvement?
86
of industrial CEOs see AI as a way to lower costs and boost productivity
That distinction matters in heavy industries, where complex assets, distributed operations, and long supply chains can make change harder to scale. AI and automation are already eroding legacy advantages faster than many incumbents expected. In automotive, most industry managers say they expect AI and other digital technologies to deliver efficiency gains of 10% within three years and 30% within five years.
Scaling is where AI ambition meets reality
AI alone won’t resolve operational complexity. In many cases, that complexity is the very barrier that prevents companies from scaling AI. Instead, the technology exposes the slow decisions, fragmented processes, and unclear accountabilities that already limit execution. If companies don’t address these pain points, their AI efforts might simply automate existing problems.
That helps explain why 90% of industrial CEOs believe their AI programs are underdelivering, citing capability gaps, pilots that fail to scale, and unproven ROI on AI investments. Among all CEOs we surveyed, 43% cited AI capability gaps; the percentage was much higher—71%—among the smaller subset of industrial CEOs.
90
of industrial CEOs say their AI programs are underdelivering
The winners will be the industrial companies that close the capability gaps and embed AI in how work actually gets done—not the ones that just run the most pilots.