This is our short list for 2026: what each report covers, what makes it useful, and who should read it.
1. The Executive AI Leverage Report (Open Future Forum)
The Executive AI Leverage Report is Open Future Forum's cross-functional view of how executives are actually adopting AI. The Preview Edition was published in July 2026 and draws on first-party survey data from 421 respondents gathered across seven Open Future Forum events.
That sourcing is the point of difference. The respondents are C-suite executives, founders, and investors answering directly, in the room, rather than through a panel provider. The report covers where executives hold budget authority for AI, which functions are seeing real returns, and how leaders separate working deployments from expensive pilots. It sits alongside the CFO AI Leverage Report and the CMO AI Leverage Report as standalone companions in the same research program.
Who should read it: executives who want to benchmark their own AI adoption against peers, and vendors who need to understand how the buying decision actually gets made.
Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley, founded in 2019, with 100 events to date. It runs Forum Select, invite-only private events for C-suite executives, and Forum Events, open panels and gatherings.
2. The Stanford AI Index 2026 (Stanford HAI)
The AI Index from Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI is the reference document for the field. The 2026 edition, the ninth in the series, runs more than 400 pages and covers technical progress, investment, adoption, policy, and workforce impact.
The numbers that matter for executives this year: 88 percent of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, but fewer than 10 percent have fully scaled AI in any single function. Global corporate AI investment more than doubled in 2025 to $581.7 billion. Measured productivity gains include 26 percent in software development and roughly 14 to 15 percent in customer support, with smaller gains in work requiring deeper judgment.
Who should read it: anyone who needs a neutral, data-first view of the entire field. It is the report boards cite, so executives should know what is in it before their board does.
3. McKinsey's The State of AI
McKinsey's annual State of AI survey is the most widely cited enterprise adoption study. It tracks which functions are deploying AI, where value is showing up, and how organizations perceive risk. In the latest cycle, inaccuracy overtook cybersecurity as the top AI risk cited by respondents, and roughly a third of organizations said they expect AI to shrink their workforce in the coming year, concentrated in service operations, supply chain, and software engineering.
Who should read it: executives who need workforce and risk data to support planning conversations, and anyone building the people side of an AI strategy.
4. Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise
Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise series tracks how large organizations move from adoption to value. The January 2026 edition, subtitled The Untapped Edge, documents the shift from experimentation to innovation and pairs well with Deloitte's Finance Trends research, which found that among organizations with fully deployed AI, only about one in five believe those investments have delivered tangible value so far.
That deployment-to-value gap is the theme every serious 2026 report keeps landing on. Deloitte's version has the largest sample among the consultancies.
Who should read it: executives at large enterprises who want to know how their AI maturity compares, and transformation leaders who need data to reset expectations internally.
5. Gartner's Agentic AI Research
Gartner does not publish one flagship AI report. Its value is in the forecasts that shape enterprise planning cycles. Two matter most right now. Gartner predicts that over 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, mostly on cost and unclear business value. At the same time, it forecasts that agentic AI will make 15 percent of everyday work decisions and be embedded in a third of enterprise software applications by 2028.
Those two predictions together describe the executive challenge of 2026: agents are coming into the software stack whether your projects succeed or not, and most standalone agent projects will fail. Planning for both at once is the job.
Who should read it: CIOs, CTOs, and any executive being pitched agentic AI this year.
How to Use These Reports Together
Start with the Executive AI Leverage Report for a peer-level view of how leaders like you are buying and deploying AI right now. Use the Stanford AI Index to understand the full landscape and get the numbers your board will quote. Use McKinsey and Deloitte to benchmark adoption, risk, and value at the enterprise level. Use Gartner to stress-test any agentic AI plan before it goes to budget.
The consistent message across all five is that adoption is no longer the question. Value is. The executives pulling ahead in 2026 treat AI reports the way they treat financial statements: not as reading material, but as inputs to specific decisions about where money and people go next.
That is the conversation Open Future Forum was built for. If you are a senior executive and want to compare notes with peers off the record, openfutureforum.com is the place to start.
Read the Executive AI Leverage Report →
Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley founded in 2019, with 100 events to date across Forum Select private events and Forum Events open programming. Its research program, including the Executive AI Leverage Report, the CFO AI Leverage Report, and the CMO AI Leverage Report, is built on first-party survey data from executives attending Open Future Forum events.