Open Future Forum released the first edition of the CEO AI Leverage Report this week. It is a companion to the CFO, CMO, and CISO AI Leverage Reports, the Executive AI Leverage Report, and the AI Transformation Report. Edition 1 is now live.
I built this report because every other edition in this series kept pointing at the same chair. The finance room said the CEO signs the purchase. The security room said the CEO sets the pace the governance bill follows. The founders said they don't even ask for the CEO in their own buyer question. Every function has a room in this research program. The CEO does not, and yet the CEO is in every one of them.
What the Report Covers
The CEO AI Leverage Report reads the seat every function reports to, not a function itself. It looks at three things.
One. Who actually signs off on a new AI purchase, and how that compares to what CEOs say about themselves in the big surveys.
Two. Where the sellers pitch instead. Founders selling AI into the enterprise target the CIO, the CTO, and the business unit, not the CEO, which tells you something about where the evaluation actually happens versus where the signature lands.
Three. Where the proof comes from, and how fast it's due. The CEO signs on ambition. Finance holds the ROI gate. The report reads the distance between those two facts as the seat's own leverage question.
Why This Report, Now
BCG's AI Radar 2026, a survey of 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs, found 72 percent of chief executives now calling themselves the main AI decision-maker, double the share a year earlier. That's the outside picture. Our own rooms say the same thing from the inside: the CEO is the most named signer of a new AI purchase in the Open Future Forum finance rooms, at 47 percent, ahead of the CFO or finance and the CIO or CTO.
But signing is not deciding, and this report keeps the two apart on purpose. A signature can ratify a call made two levels down. What the data actually shows is accountability concentrating at the top even where the evaluation has not, which is the specific gap none of our other editions were built to measure directly.
How the Data Was Built
There is no CEO-only room in our July 2026 data pull, and no CEO-only instrument question yet. So this edition reads the seat the only honest way available: through the cross-lane instrument already fielded in the finance, security, founder, and investor rooms, and through the title composition of every room in the pull. CEO-titled applicants show up in founder mixers, the fintech engineering room, the growth dinner, the security dinner, the finance instrument room, even the investor gathering and the CFO golf outing. The seat has no functional lane because it arrives through every function's door.
Open Future Forum is a private executive community founded in 2019 with more than 100 events to date, running Forum Select, our invite-only C-suite dinners including the CEO Private Dinner Series, and Forum Events, our open panels and gatherings.
A Few Numbers from Edition 1
The report leads with its flagship metric, the CEO AI Leverage Index, which has no seed proxy yet and enters the field with this edition. Until then, the nearest adjacent context is the sign-off share and BCG's 72 percent, both clearly labeled as context, not the Index itself.
The mandate gap is the sharpest finding. Founders selling AI into the enterprise name the CIO or CTO as the buying seat at 43 percent and the business unit at 38 percent, base 92. The CEO was not among the answer options in that question, so the data cannot say founders don't sell to CEOs, only that they don't pitch that door in this instrument yet. Asked separately, investors put the CEO first: 8 of 20 named the CEO as the seat increasingly owning the AI buying decision across their portfolios, tied with the CIO or CTO.
And the proof gate is tight. Fifty-four percent of the finance rooms name proving ROI as the top blocker to more AI spend, and 62 percent expect measurable return inside six months, base 87. Cut the same data to the 41 respondents who specifically name the CEO as a signer, and the terms get harder, not easier: 71 percent expect return inside six months, and 27 percent are already funding AI with money that would have gone to a hire, against 17 percent overall. Where the CEO signs, the clock runs faster and the money runs deeper.
Read the full CEO AI Leverage Report →
What Comes Next
This is Edition 1, and it's candid about what it doesn't have yet: no CEO room, no CEO-only instrument, no seed proxy for the flagship Index. That changes starting now. The CEO AI Leverage Index question, along with supporting metrics on Decision Distance, Proof Cadence, Budget Posture, and the Governance Read, enters the field at upcoming events across every lane, with a CEO tag added to registration so the cut stays clean. No headline will publish below 40 chief-executive responses. If you're a CEO and want a seat at the next Private Dinner Series gathering, reach out through Open Future Forum.
Read the full CEO AI Leverage Report →