Despite high AI adoption rates, few businesses are seeing a return on investment. That is the key finding of the “AI at Work Index 2026” released by 5W, an AI communications firm. According to the report, 88 percent of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 78 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, just 5 percent of organizations report transformative returns from formal AI investments. The remaining 95 percent report no measurable impact on profit and loss.
More than 90 percent of organizations have employees who regularly use personal AI tools for work, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot through personal accounts. To accommodate the increase in usage, 40 percent of companies have purchased official large language model (LLM) subscriptions. Another 50 percent are operating with shadow AI, according to the report, with half of U.S. workers using AI tools at work without knowing whether such use is permitted. Among AI users, 44 percent acknowledge using AI improperly in the workplace.
Formal enterprise adoption has never been higher, the report stated. However, reported returns on investment have never been weaker. The index argues that productivity gains are occurring within the shadow economy on personal accounts, where they cannot be measured, governed or scaled.
“The shadow economy is where the work is. Banning it loses you productivity. Ignoring it loses you the governance,” said Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W. “The companies that figure this out in 2026 are the ones that channel shadow AI into enterprise infrastructure—not by suppressing it, but by recognizing it as the leading indicator of where the official program needs to go. The leaders who treat employees’ personal AI use as a problem are looking at the answer and calling it the question.”
