Another "State of AI" report with impressive charts and tidy conclusions about adoption rates? Hard pass.
We went straight to the source: research leaders actually running teams, managing stakeholders, and making real decisions about AI adoption. Leaders from Google, Target, major financial institutions, and enterprise design organizations shared what really happened in 2025.
No checkboxes. No vendor spin. Just open questions and room to be honest.
What they told us wasn't a transformation narrative. It was messier, more nuanced, and far more useful than any benchmark study.
This report is for you if:
- You lead a research team and are figuring out AI adoption (without the hype)
- You want to hear from peers, not vendors trying to sell you something
- You're managing executive expectations about what AI can and should do
- You're more interested in what actually worked than what's theoretically possible
- You're tired of reading about AI's "potential" and want to know what's real
What's inside:
- The Amplification Effect: Why AI made strong teams stronger and exposed gaps in weaker ones
- Where AI delivered: Concrete examples of collapsing days into hours (with the caveats nobody talks about)
- The Hallucination Tax: What it really costs to verify AI outputs, and why you need to budget for it
- What stays human: The capabilities leaders refuse to hand over to AI, and why
- Managing up: How to reset executive expectations when they've been shaped by headlines
- Peer advice: What leaders wish they'd known before starting their AI transformation
- 2026 priorities: Where the smartest teams are focusing next
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