Artificial intelligence and other next-generation technologies are rapidly reshaping how organisations operate, but many businesses are struggling to translate ambition into measurable returns, according to a KPMG report.
The Global Tech Report 2026, titled ‘Leading in the Intelligence Age: Excelling today, shaping tomorrow’, examines how organisations worldwide are responding to accelerating technological change and highlights a growing gap between experimentation and scaled, value-driven adoption.
KPMG, which surveyed 2,500 tech professionals worldwide, found that while expectations around emerging technologies remain high, delivering consistent return on investment (ROI) remains a significant challenge.
Although 74% of respondents said their AI use cases are delivering business value, only 24% reported achieving ROI across multiple use cases.
According to the report, organisations seeking to thrive in what KPMG calls the ‘Intelligence Age’ must balance ambition with disciplined execution.
The challenges
The report found tech companies’ tech plans were often outdated before they were fully implemented due to the pace of innovation.
In an introduction to the report, KPMG global leader Guy Holland says static planning is now obsolete and “to thrive, organisations need adaptive strategies that embrace flexibility and speed”.
The report also encourages leaders to keep their eye on the horizon at all times, preparing for the magnitude of change to come.
A lack of talent is also holding many organisations back from realising their tech goals, according to respondents.
The report advises prioritising investment in people, as well as building a culture that welcomes change. It acknowledged, however, the latter was difficult, with fears of job security persisting.
Encouragingly, it said most organisations who responded to the survey anticipated only modest reductions in permanent human roles over the next two years.
Another concern highlighted in the survey, was trade-offs businesses were making while trying to move fast and keep costs down as they implement tech such as AI.
Sixty-nine percent of tech executives said areas like security, scalability and data standardisation were being compromised as a result.
The report also found that traditional measures of ROI are not sufficient when looking at AI value, with 58% of organisations acknowledging this.
“Tech executives need to look at the typical pattern of ROI for guidance and update their ROI KPIs to align with the kinds of business value that AI can generate,” it said.
Many organisations are still relying on indirect or hypothetical benefits when making investment decisions, which can obscure true performance, the report notes.
The future
Looking ahead, the report identifies a new wave of disruption on the horizon.
Agentic AI – systems capable of acting autonomously – is already attracting significant attention, with 92% of respondents saying that managing AI agents will become an important skill within the next five years.
Quantum computing is also flagged as a major future disruptor, offering unprecedented computing power but raising significant security and governance challenges.
More speculative developments, such as artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence, are described in the report as holding unpredictable but potentially transformative implications.
Reflecting on the report, Cayman-based AI strategist Tamsin Deasey-Weinstein said KPMG “are basically saying what a lot of us are seeing”.
“AI can create value in individual use cases, but most businesses really struggle to scale it,” she told Cayman Independent.
“We all have high hopes but practically they fail because we don’t have the culture where it needs to be as yet so allow mass adoption and in turn ROI.”
She said in a smaller market like the Cayman Islands, that gap can be even wider because tools are easy to buy, but implementation capacity and specialist talent are much harder to scale.
“It doesn’t matter what tools we have access to if we don’t know how to use them or scale them.”
Deasey-Weinstein also noted it was “striking” to see the large number of companies choosing speed and competitiveness over security.
“The fear of losing market share is currently outweighing the fear of a security breach. I believe in 2026 AI governance will explode,” she said.
“My best advice to organisations is to get governance right early, invest in continuous upskilling of your people and get the foundations in place first.”
