The CEO AI Leverage Report

Executive Summary

The CEO holds a position on AI no other seat holds: accountable to the board for the AI story, most likely to sign the purchase, and furthest from the workflows where the return is proved. This report reads that position from the operator level: what the seats around the CEO are doing with the CEO's signature.

The outside picture says the seat has claimed the decision. BCG's AI Radar 2026, a survey of 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs, finds 72 percent of chief executives calling themselves the main AI decision-maker. The money underneath them has gone core: innovation budgets collapsed from 25 to 7 percent of AI spend in a year (a16z), and enterprise spend hit $37 billion at 3.2x, with 47 percent of AI deals reaching production (Menlo Ventures). The counter-record is just as loud: MIT found roughly 95 percent of pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss impact, S&P Global found abandonment jumping from 17 to 42 percent, and Gartner expects more than 40 percent of agentic projects canceled by end 2027, while Wharton's study of about 800 senior leaders points the other way, with three in four reporting positive returns. Both sides describe decisions signed at the top.

Our own rooms show the same seat from the inside, and they show the gap. The CEO is the most named signer of AI purchases at 47 percent (base 87). But the sellers pitch other doors: founders name the CIO or CTO at 43 percent and the business unit at 38 percent as the buying seat (base 92; the CEO was not among the answer options). The proof the signature depends on is produced below the seat and gated hard: proving ROI is the top blocker at 54 percent, with 62 percent expecting return inside six months (base 87). And the governance the CEO's pace creates is funded case by case: 69 percent of the security room has no dedicated AI security line (base 26, directional). The CEO owns the decision and outsources the proof. That distance is what this report measures.

The flagship metric of this series is the CEO AI Leverage Index: the share of chief executives who say AI is mainly letting the company grow output without matching headcount growth, or replacing planned hires. The question is new. It has not yet been fielded, and there is no seed proxy for it in the data; the nearest reads, reported as adjacent context only, are the sign-off share above and BCG's 72 percent. Edition 1 sets the baseline the Index will be read against.

The Answers We Have Now

This section is the data in hand, drawn from Open Future Forum event records and instrument questions across the twelve events in the July 2026 pull. Invitation outreach that did not become an application is excluded from every count in this report; the figures count the people who applied. Demand figures are rounded floors of distinct applicants; opinion figures come from the instrument questions in the application flow, base on the face of every figure. One framing note shapes everything: there is no CEO room in the pull and no CEO-only instrument question. This edition reads the seat the only honest way available, through the cross-lane instrument, the title composition of the rooms, and the seats around the CEO, and it says so.

Finding 1: The CEO signs more than any other seat

Asked who signs off on a new AI purchase, the finance rooms named the CEO first, at 47 percent, ahead of the CFO or finance at 25 percent, the CIO or CTO at 23 percent, and an individual business unit at 17 percent (base 87, any-mention). A moving-market note, reported as a finding: the Executive AI Leverage Report published this read on a base of 76; the base has grown to 87 and the CEO share held at 47 percent, consistent with BCG's 72 percent of CEOs claiming the decision. One distinction matters and this report keeps it: signing is not deciding. A signature can ratify a call made two levels down. What the data shows is accountability concentrating at the top even where the evaluation has not, which is the position the rest of this edition reads.

Finding 2: The network has no CEO room, and the CEO is in every room

The July 2026 pull has no CEO event. It has chief executives everywhere. Counting applicants whose stated job title is CEO or chief executive, of those stating a title: 57 in one founder room and 48 in another, 43 in the fintech engineering room, 29 at the growth dinner, 13 at the security dinner, 12 in the finance instrument room, 6 among the investors, and 5 at the CFO golf gathering. Read as composition, this is the seat's shape: the CEO has no functional lane because the CEO arrives through the function door, the security room for the risk, the growth room for the pipeline, the finance room for the budget. Which is how AI arrives too. Both are distributed across every function and owned as a whole by one chair.

Finding 3: The sellers pitch other doors

Asked who owns the buying decision inside the companies they sell to, 92 AI founders named the CIO or CTO at 43 percent, a business-unit leader at 38 percent, and the CFO or finance at 20 percent (any-mention). One methods point is stated on the face of the figure and repeated here: the CEO was not among the question's answer options, so this data cannot say whether founders sell to CEOs, only which of the offered doors they pitch. The counterweight comes from the investor room, and it points at the top: asked who increasingly owns the AI buying decision across their portfolios, 8 of 20 investors named the CEO, tied with the CIO or CTO, with 5 saying it is too early to say (base 20, counts, directional). The sellers work the function doors. The capital behind them is watching the corner office.

Finding 4: The proof lives below the seat

The same rooms that put the pen in the CEO's hand describe where the proof has to come from. Proving ROI is the most named blocker at 54 percent, ahead of integration at 22 percent, data readiness at 21 percent, security and compliance at 18 percent, and talent at 15 percent (base 87, any-mention), and the window is short: 62 percent expect measurable return inside six months. Net-new is how ambition spends; reallocation is how proof spends; and at 46 percent net-new (base 87), the rooms are still mostly on ambition money, inside a six-month window, with the ROI gate held two levels below the signature. That is the mandate gap in one paragraph.

Honesty notes on the counts

• Figures are rounded floors of distinct applicants, kept deliberately conservative. Invitation outreach that did not become an application is excluded from every count, and application is not attendance. Some people apply to more than one event, so lane totals are floors rather than exact unique counts.
• The rooms are role-mixed. The largest applicant block in the network is engineers, not executives, and the CEO-title figures are counts of those stating a title, never shares of a room's full applicant count. An applicant count is never presented as a count of CEOs.
• The founder buyer question offered no CEO answer option. This report never claims founders do not sell to CEOs; it reports which of the offered doors they pitch.
• The flagship CEO AI Leverage Index question has not yet been fielded and has no seed proxy in the data. The sign-off share and BCG's 72 percent are adjacent context, clearly labeled, never the Index.

Defensible claim language, from the data in hand

• "The CEO is the most named signer of AI purchases in the Open Future Forum finance rooms, at 47 percent (base 87)."
• "CEO-titled applicants appear in every room in the July 2026 Open Future Forum pull, from the founder mixers to the security dinner, counted of those stating a title."
• "Founders selling AI name the CIO or CTO at 43 percent and the business unit at 38 percent as the buying seat (base 92); the CEO was not among the answer options."

Early Signal from the Room

The instrument questions are live across the lanes, and this section reads them as the decision environment the CEO governs. Each figure carries its base on its face.

The money still carries the ambition signature

This year's AI budgets in the finance rooms are mostly net-new at 46 percent, with 24 percent not sure or without a budget yet, 24 percent reallocated from other software, and 17 percent from money that would have gone to headcount (base 87, any-mention). Net-new is the pattern of a decision not yet forced to displace anything; the reallocated and would-be-headcount shares are the harvest signals, still the minority. For the seat that signs, this is the exposure in one chart.

The deployment context: the network is running, not exploring

Asked where their team is with AI today, 71 percent of the largest finance room already runs Claude or another AI tool, 22 percent are evaluating, and 8 percent have not started (base 185, single-select). The tools are in, so the question the seat answers for is no longer whether to adopt but whether adoption changes the company's arithmetic. The national baseline runs far lower, 18 to 20 percent (US Census Bureau), which is the selectivity of these rooms speaking.

Twelve applicants to the finance instrument room carry a CEO title, and eight answered the instrument; their answers are reported as counts, directional. On sign-off, seven of the eight named the CEO, themselves, as the signer. Four mentioned net-new budget money, and four of eight expect measurable return inside six months. Eight answers prove nothing, and this report does not pretend otherwise. But the shape matches the wider read: the seat claims the signature, spends new money, and accepts a short clock. The flagship instrument is built to ask this seat directly, at scale.

The governance bill for the CEO's pace

Asked how AI security is funded right now, 35 percent of the security room said case by case, 31 percent have its own budget line, 19 percent carve it out of the existing security budget, and 15 percent have no AI security spend, which puts 69 percent without a dedicated line (base 26, single-select, directional). The same room names securing AI agents as its biggest problem, at 62 percent (any-mention). Read from the top, this is the bill for CEO-paced deployment: the ambition is signed upstairs, the surface it creates is governed downstairs, on ad hoc money.

The pricing the market is sending toward the seat

Of the 92 founders asked how they charge, 83 are charging, and roughly two thirds price on usage or outcomes, 53 of 83 (any-mention). Usage-based pricing leads the mix at 41 percent, ahead of flat subscriptions at 25 percent, per-seat at 21 percent, and outcome-based at 21 percent. Outcome-metered pricing is the supply side building the proof the CEO's own gate demands. When the pricing and the proof gate meet, the seat that signs finally gets a receipt in the same units as the promise.

Two Cuts Deeper: The Signature and the Sector

The reads above describe the room as a whole. This section cuts the same data two new ways, and both cuts change the picture.

When the CEO signs: the base 41 cut

Of the 87 finance-room respondents, 41 name the CEO among the signers, which clears this program's 40-response floor and can carry its own figures; sign-off is any-mention, so signer groups overlap, with the convention on the chart face. Where the CEO signs, the clock runs faster and the money runs deeper: 71 percent expect measurable return inside six months, against 62 percent of the full base, and 27 percent fund AI with money that would have gone to headcount, against 17 percent overall. Eleven of the fifteen headcount-money respondents in the entire base sit in the CEO-signed group. Directionally, the cut runs the other way too: among the 20 naming the CIO or CTO, proving ROI is the top blocker for only 8 (counts, below the floor). The seat that signs on ambition also sets the hardest terms: the shortest clock, and the money that used to be a hire.

The founders' door depends on the sector

Cut the founder buyer read by the seller's own sector and the single door becomes several. Enterprise-software founders knock on the CIO or CTO: 18 of 28. Fintech and insurance founders barely do: 2 of 15 name the CIO, while 7 name the CFO or finance and 6 the business unit. Health and life-science founders lead with the business unit, 6 of 17. The pricing sorts the same way: 13 of 15 fintech and insurance founders price on usage or outcomes, against 6 of the 12 charging health founders. All cells sit below the floor, reported as counts, directional, and the standing caveat holds: the CEO was not among the answer options. For the top seat the reading is practical: which door the market knocks on is a fact about the sector's proof, and the more meterable the work, the closer the seller pitches to the money.

By the Numbers

The CEO's AI position, in the figures the market is citing. External benchmarks are attributed and used for context; Open Future Forum figures carry the base.

• 72 percent of CEOs call themselves the main AI decision-maker, in a survey of 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs (BCG, AI Radar 2026).
• 12 percent and 56 percent: the share of chief executives reporting both cost and revenue benefits from AI, and the share reporting neither, in PwC's 29th Global CEO Survey of 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries; CEOs with strong AI foundations are three times more likely to report meaningful returns.
• 42 percent and 30 percent: AI and technology as the top CEO investment priority, and the share of global CEOs naming AI the leading external factor that could hurt their business in 2026 (The Conference Board, C-Suite Outlook 2026, 1,732 executives including 771 CEOs).
• 52 percent against 36 percent: headcount growth since 2018 at the companies most exposed to AI versus the least exposed, across more than one billion job ads in 27 countries (PwC, 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer). The decoupling is running through growth, not shrinkage.
• 25 percent to 7 percent, the one-year collapse in the innovation-budget share of AI spend, as spend grew roughly 75 percent and moved core (a16z).
• $37 billion of enterprise generative AI spend in 2025, at 3.2x, with 47 percent of AI deals reaching production against a 25 percent SaaS rate (Menlo Ventures).
• Roughly 95 percent of enterprise generative AI pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss impact (MIT, The GenAI Divide, 2025).
• Three in four enterprise leaders report positive returns on generative AI, with 82 percent weekly use (Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective, a study of about 800 senior leaders at large US companies).
• 17 percent to 42 percent, the one-year jump in the share of companies abandoning most of their AI initiatives (S&P Global Market Intelligence).
• 7 percent of firms have fully scaled AI, and only 39 percent report any EBIT impact from it (McKinsey).
• More than 40 percent of agentic AI projects are expected to be canceled by the end of 2027 (Gartner).
• 11 percent to 53 percent, the rise in AI agent deployment at $1 billion-plus US organizations between early 2025 and mid 2026, while only 26 percent have real-time visibility into AI operating cost (KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse).
• 18 to 20 percent of US businesses use AI on the nationally representative read, and 57 percent of adopters run it in three or fewer functions (US Census Bureau).

From our own rooms, with the base shown:

• 47 percent: the CEO as the most named signer of a new AI purchase (Open Future Forum finance rooms, base 87, any-mention).
• 43 percent and 38 percent: the founders' most targeted buying seats, the CIO or CTO and the business unit (base 92, any-mention; the CEO was not among the answer options).
• 8 of 20 investors name the CEO as the seat increasingly owning the portfolio's AI buying decision, tied with the CIO or CTO (base 20, counts, directional).
• 54 percent and 62 percent: the proving-ROI blocker and the share expecting return inside six months (base 87).
• 69 percent of the security room without a dedicated AI security line (base 26, single-select, directional).

The Thesis, in One Line

The CEO is the seat that answers for AI and the seat furthest from where AI answers back, and leverage for this seat means closing that distance without adding layers. This report puts a measured number on the closing, from the rooms where the seats around the CEO are doing the work.

What the CEO Seat Sees Across the C-Suite

Every other report in this family reads a function. This one reads the seat every function reports to, so the view runs the other way: what the CEO's AI position looks like refracted through each seat, written top-down on purpose.

The CFO

The proof office. The 54 percent proving-ROI gate and the 62 percent six-month window (base 87) are finance holding the CEO's own signature to account. The funding mix, 46 percent net-new, is the number the two seats will eventually argue about, because net-new is defensible exactly as long as the proof arrives.

The CIO or CTO

The door the market knocks on, named by 43 percent of founders selling in (base 92, an option set without a CEO answer) and holding 23 percent of internal sign-offs (base 87). The seat the CEO delegates the how to, rationally: the CIO can evaluate what the CEO can only sponsor. The risk runs the other way, a technology function admitting AI faster than the top of the house can absorb it.

The CISO

The bill for the pace. The security room names securing AI agents as its top problem at 62 percent while 69 percent have no dedicated AI security line (base 26, directional). Deployment speed is set at the top; its governance cost lands below, funded case by case. A CEO who wants the AI story to survive an incident funds this line before the incident prices it.

The CMO and growth leader

The agents that act in the company's name in public: in the brand's voice, on customer data, where a failure is a headline rather than an incident report. The CMO's agents are the CEO's reputation running partly unattended.

The business-unit leader

The shadow buyer, targeted by 38 percent of founders and holding 17 percent of internal sign-offs. The unit buys closest to the work and furthest from the inventory, and the CEO answers for those purchases anyway. The gap between what the units have bought and what the top can list is what the Governance Read exposes.

The CAIO

The seat CEOs create when the distance gets too long: one desk to own the capability, the policy, and the inventory. Whether that delegation shortens the CEO's decision distance or just adds a floor to it is exactly what the Decision Distance metric is written to tell apart.

The board

The room where the CEO is the operator. Cyber is a standing board topic and AI governance is becoming one: the CEO who asks every function for its AI proof is asked for the same thing one level up. How many systems, what do they reach, what did they return. The Index gives that answer a number the board can watch move.

Two seats outside the company, inside the same picture

The AI founder. The other CEO in these rooms, and the largest single title block in the network. The founder chief executive sells the leverage the enterprise chief executive signs for, and prices it increasingly on the buyer's own terms: roughly two thirds of the 83 charging founders price on usage or outcomes (base 92). The two CEOs are converging on the same unit of account, the measured result.

The venture investor. The early read that points at the top. Asked who increasingly owns the AI buying decision across their portfolios, 8 of 20 investors named the CEO, tied with the CIO or CTO (base 20, counts, directional). The sellers pitch the function doors; the capital behind them is starting to route around the delegation and watch the corner office directly.

The Same View, by Industry

Industry sits underneath the seat, because what a CEO can safely delegate depends on what the sector punishes. Open Future Forum does not yet run industry-specific CEO rooms, so this read is drawn from external benchmarks, attributed to McKinsey, Deloitte, and NVIDIA, representative of 2026 cross-industry surveys. One question, asked five times: how much of the AI decision can this CEO hand to someone else.

Financial services

Among the most adopted and best-proven sectors, around 85 to 89 percent on Deloitte's numbers, and the most regulated. Model risk management predates generative AI, so this CEO can delegate the most: the delegation lands on standing machinery. The residual question is agentic, because the old frameworks scored models and the new systems act.

Technology and software

The highest adoption of any sector, around 92 percent, where the CEO's company is both buyer and seller. Coding is the largest line of AI application spend and the first place output visibly decouples from headcount, so the Index should read highest here first, where the product story and the cost story are the same story.

Healthcare and life sciences

The fastest accelerator, climbing from roughly 38 percent adoption in 2024 to about 67 percent in 2026. Compliance gates deployment on the way in, so this CEO delegates less and waits more. The trade is speed for inventory: the healthcare CEO is the one most likely to know how many AI systems are running.

Manufacturing and industrials

Around half to two thirds of firms, with the cleanest cost-out case and the most physical consequence: AI touches operational technology, so an error is a stoppage. The delegation question here is a safety question, which boards understand instinctively, and which keeps the decision closer to the top than the spreadsheet suggests.

Retail and consumer

Among the highest adopters of agentic AI, close to half of firms, with agents nearest the customer and the transaction; failure is fraud or a pricing error at volume, in public. The retail CEO delegates execution and keeps the brand exposure, so agent governance arrives as a revenue-protection question, the framing that gets funded fastest.

The pattern across all five is the seat's pattern. The industry does not change the CEO's question. It changes how much of the answer the CEO can hand to someone else.

What AI People Say About the CEO's AI Mandate

The commentary around AI in 2026 has split into a sharp, useful debate, and almost every exhibit in it, on both sides, is a chief-executive decision. One convention first, disclosed in the open: where a vendor-published statistic would carry weight, this report says who published it and what they sell, and it prefers analyst, academic, and benchmark sources.

The reckoning

The skeptic case is that AI was bought faster than it was proved, and the record supports it. MIT found roughly 95 percent of pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss impact, S&P Global found abandonment jumping from 17 to 42 percent in a year, and Gartner expects more than 40 percent of agentic projects canceled by end 2027. The two cautionary tales of the cycle are both chief-executive stories: Uber capped agentic coding spend at monthly per-tool limits after exhausting its annual budget in four months (Bloomberg), and Klarna publicly reversed parts of its AI-first customer service bet, a chief executive owning an AI decision in both directions. And the chief executives say it themselves: in PwC's survey of 4,454 CEOs, 56 percent report neither revenue gains nor cost reductions from AI, and only 12 percent report both. The reckoning, read honestly, is not a technology failure story. It is a governance story about decisions signed at the top and measured nowhere.

The counter-case

The builders and their backers read the same market as a selection event, and their numbers are real too. Spend is climbing and concentrating: $37 billion at 3.2x, with 47 percent of AI deals reaching production, nearly twice the traditional SaaS rate (Menlo Ventures); innovation budgets collapsed to 7 percent because the money went core, not away (a16z); Wharton's study of about 800 senior leaders finds three in four reporting positive returns, a differently built read that points the other way from MIT's; and roughly two thirds of the charging founders in our rooms price on usage or outcomes (53 of 83, base 92). The labor data points the same way: the companies most exposed to AI grew headcount faster than the least exposed, 52 percent against 36 percent since 2018 (PwC, 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer), which reads leverage as growth rather than shrinkage. On this reading the CEOs who kept signing were not reckless. They were early, and the market is sorting early from wrong.

The reconciliation

The two sides agree on more than they admit. Spend rising while abandonment rises is what a market does when accountability arrives: the checks keep being written and the unproven ones stop being renewed. Both curves route through the same chair. A market where the CEO writes the AI story for the board and inherits its proof gap from the functions is a market selecting for chief executives who shorten the distance between the two, and the CEO AI Leverage Index is built to measure whether they are, edition over edition, from inside the rooms where the seats around them are doing the work.

The Evidence Behind the Theses

The report rests on five theses. Here is how each holds up, first-party and external, support and counter-evidence, so the claims are calibrated rather than asserted. External figures are attributed and used for context; they are not Open Future Forum findings.

Thesis 1: The CEO has become the primary owner of the AI decision. Well supported.

Support. The CEO is the most named signer of AI purchases at 47 percent (base 87), the share held as the base grew from 76; 72 percent of CEOs claim the decision themselves (BCG, 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs); and 8 of 20 investors name the CEO as the seat increasingly owning the buying decision across their portfolios (base 20, counts).

Counter. Sign-off is not deciding: a signature can ratify an evaluation made below, and the CIO and business-unit shares show the decision distributing even as the signature concentrates. Decision Distance is built to separate owning the call from ratifying it.

Thesis 2: The sellers route around the seat. Partially supported, stated carefully.

Support. Founders name the CIO or CTO at 43 percent and the business unit at 38 percent as the buying seat (base 92, any-mention), and the bottom-up motion Menlo documents is a motion that reaches the signature last.

Counter. The founder question offered no CEO answer option, so this data cannot say founders do not sell to CEOs, and this report does not say it. The investor read points the other way, the CEO tied first at 8 of 20. The option set gains a CEO answer at the next registration update, reported as a methods change.

Thesis 3: The proof the CEO signs for is produced below the seat, and often not produced at all. Well supported.

Support. Proving ROI blocks at 54 percent and 62 percent expect return inside six months (base 87), while the external record shows the proof mostly missing: MIT's roughly 95 percent, McKinsey's 39 percent seeing any EBIT effect, and the CEOs' own account, 56 percent reporting neither revenue nor cost benefit (PwC, 4,454 CEOs). The 46 percent net-new funding read is ambition money awaiting exactly this proof.

Counter. Wharton's three in four reporting positive returns is the strongest counter-evidence, a differently built read on about 800 senior leaders, and it may describe the same market later in the proof cycle. The Proof Cadence metric is written to measure how often the seat actually sees a result, rather than inferring it.

Thesis 4: CEO-paced deployment creates governance debt the CEO does not see priced. Supported first-party and directionally.

Support. 69 percent of the security room has no dedicated AI security line while 62 percent name securing AI agents as the top problem (base 26, directional). KPMG's quarterly pulse shows the same shape at scale: human validation of agent outputs rose from 22 to 63 percent in a year, yet only 26 percent of organizations have real-time visibility into AI operating cost. MarketsandMarkets prices the gap as a market: $1.65 billion to $13.52 billion by 2032 at a 42 percent compound rate.

Counter. The security base is 26 and self-selected into an AI-security event, and a dedicated line is not the only honest way to fund governance. The Governance Read tracks the inventory question over editions rather than asserting the debt from one read.

Thesis 5: Most of the market is still mid-curve, and the CEO's story runs ahead of it. Well supported, and the honest counterweight.

Support. McKinsey finds 7 percent of firms fully scaled, Gartner expects more than 40 percent of agentic projects canceled by end 2027, and the Census puts national firm-level AI use at 18 to 20 percent. Our rooms run far ahead of that baseline, 71 percent deployed (base 185), which is the selectivity of the rooms speaking, not the country moving.

Counter. The mid-curve reading can flatter inaction: adoption is still climbing, the proven deployments are compounding (Wharton, Menlo), and the most AI-exposed companies are out-hiring the rest (PwC Jobs Barometer). Mid-curve is a position, not a verdict, and the Index watches this community's position change.

The report leads on Theses 1 and 3, states 2 and 4 in their careful forms with the caveats attached, and treats 5 as the calibration that keeps the rest honest.

AI Leverage, Measured

AI leverage, read from the top seat, is the point where the company's output stops tracking its headcount and the CEO can prove it. Three of the Index's readings tie into Open Future Forum's executive AI transformation work: Decision Distance is the seat's own decoupling signal, the distance between the signature and the measured result; Budget Posture is the spend-going-core migration seen from the top, the shift a16z's 25-to-7 collapse describes at market level; and the Governance Read is the inventory metric, because a story that cannot be counted cannot be governed, and a CEO who cannot count it is telling the board someone else's number. Tracked over editions, the readings give the top seat a measured line to stand beside the functional ones.

About This Report

The CEO AI Leverage Report is an Open Future Forum research report. It reads how chief executives are deciding, funding, and getting leverage from AI, from the operator level, wherever Open Future Forum convenes them. This is Edition 1, and each edition carries its own number so the CEO AI Leverage Index line can be tracked over time. Four companion Open Future Forum reports stand alongside this one: the CFO AI Leverage Report reads finance, the CMO AI Leverage Report reads marketing, the CISO AI Leverage Report reads security, and the Executive AI Leverage Report reads the leverage itself across all the rooms. The five share the same community, the same honesty rules, and the same base-on-face convention, and they cite each other where the lanes cross.

What This Is

A recurring read on one question, asked of the chief executives in the Open Future Forum community: is AI changing your company's growth arithmetic, and how close are you, personally, to the proof. It is built on rooms most people cannot reach, where the same executives return event after event, so answers can be collected directly and tracked. The flagship number is the CEO AI Leverage Index. CEO sentiment surveys exist at scale; the paired read, the claim against what the seats around the CEO do with the signature, in one community, over time, belongs to no one yet.

What This Is Not

This is the honest part, and it is what keeps the report credible. It is not a leadership ranking, not a vendor evaluation, and not a market-size estimate: it does not compete with BCG or McKinsey on CEO surveys at scale, which do that work well across thousands of executives. This report reads a small, selective sample of operators from one community, states the base on every figure, and presents nothing as a probability sample. This edition is candid about its materials: there is no CEO room in the pull and no CEO-only instrument yet, so Edition 1 reads the seat through the cross-lane instrument, the title composition of the rooms, and external benchmarks, and the flagship arrives with the field work it announces.

The Gap It Fills

The big surveys ask CEOs what they believe about AI. The functional reports read what each function is doing. None reads the two together: the seat's claim on the decision, held against what the seats around it do with the signature, in the same community, tracked over time. That pairing is the gap, and the Index is the number built to fill it.

Definitions

• Chief executive. A respondent whose stated title is CEO or an equivalent top operating executive. Founder chief executives are tagged as such; a founder-lane figure is never presented as a read of enterprise CEOs.
• Decision distance. The organizational levels between the person who signs an AI purchase and the person who can describe its measured return.
• Sign-off versus decision. Signing is ratifying; deciding is evaluating. The sign-off data measures where accountability concentrates, not necessarily where the evaluation happens, and the report keeps the two apart.
• AI budget. AI spend read by its source: net-new, reallocated from other software, or money that would have gone to headcount.
• Shadow AI. AI tools in use without central sign-off or, often, knowledge. The business unit's purchasing, which the CEO answers for anyway.
• Respondent base. Every published figure states its base. No headline publishes below 40 role-tagged responses; smaller bases are directional reads, reported as counts where small.

Questions This Report Answers

What is the CEO AI Leverage Report?

An Open Future Forum operator-research report on how chief executives are deciding, funding, and getting leverage from AI, with the base stated on every figure and no headline published below 40 chief-executive responses.

What is the CEO AI Leverage Index?

The flagship metric: the share of chief executives who say AI mainly lets the company grow output without matching headcount growth or replaces planned hires. Asked of chief executives only, reported with its full distribution, tracked edition over edition. The question enters the field with this edition; it has no seed proxy.

Who signs off on AI purchases in 2026?

The CEO, more than any other seat: 47 percent of the Open Future Forum finance rooms name the CEO as the signer, ahead of the CFO or finance at 25 percent and the CIO or CTO at 23 percent (base 87, any-mention), consistent with BCG's 72 percent of CEOs claiming the decision.

Do CEOs actually make the AI decision, or just sign it?

The data measures where accountability concentrates, not where evaluation happens. The signature sits at the top at 47 percent; the sellers pitch the CIO or CTO and the business unit; the proof gate is held by finance. The Decision Distance metric entering the field is built to separate owning the call from ratifying it.

Who do AI companies sell to?

Founders name the CIO or CTO at 43 percent and a business-unit leader at 38 percent (base 92, any-mention). The CEO was not among the answer options, so the data cannot say whether founders sell to CEOs. Asked separately, 8 of 20 investors named the CEO as the seat increasingly owning the portfolio's buying decision.

Is AI changing how CEOs plan headcount?

The early signals are indirect: 17 percent of the finance rooms fund AI with money that would have gone to headcount (base 87), while the Census finds AI-related employment decreases in only 2 percent of firms. The Index measures the decoupling directly, from chief executives themselves, starting next edition.

How is this different from CEO surveys like BCG's?

The big surveys ask chief executives what they believe about AI, at scale. This report also reads what the seats around the CEO do with the CEO's signature, in one community, over time, and pairs the two. The claim and the record, side by side, is the product.

What We Will Measure

The answers in hand today are the decision environment. The flagship layer arrives with the instrument below, fielded at upcoming events across the lanes and asked of chief executives only. These figures are not inferred from registrations; they come from a question a chief executive answered.

The Flagship Metric: the CEO AI Leverage Index

Question (chief executives only, about the company they lead): In the company you lead, AI today is mainly: letting the company grow output without matching headcount growth / replacing planned hires / freeing teams for higher-value work / not yet material to how the company runs. The Index is the combined share choosing the first two answers, reported as a single percentage with the full distribution beneath it, tracked edition over edition. This question is new, it has not yet been fielded, and it has no seed proxy in the data. The sign-off share and BCG's 72 percent are adjacent context, clearly labeled, never the Index.

Supporting metrics

• Decision Distance. The person who can describe your AI systems' measured return is: you / a direct report / two or more levels down / no one yet. The gap metric of this edition, turned into a question.
• Proof Cadence. You see a measured AI result: monthly or better / quarterly / annually / never. How often the seat actually gets the receipt.
• Budget Posture. Next year's AI budget: grows / holds / shrinks / no budget. Reported as net direction, for comparability.
• Governance Read. An inventory of live AI tools and data connections exists: yes / partial / no. The counting metric underneath the story.

The instrument

Core, every edition, chief executives only: the flagship question, Decision Distance, Proof Cadence, Budget Posture, and the Governance Read. Rotating: whether the chief executive has personally used the company's deployed AI in the last month; whether an AI purchase has been canceled and who decided; the share of the executive team with an AI metric in their goals; whether the board has asked for an AI inventory. One trade is stated in the open: publishing the instrument invites priming, and holding it back invites distrust; this program publishes it.

Collection

Field the core at upcoming events across every lane, since the composition data shows the chief executives are already in all of them, and add a CEO tag to the registration flow so the cut is clean. Hold any headline figure until at least 40 chief-executive responses sit behind it.

How It Runs

Sample and Honesty

The figures describe the Open Future Forum community, a selective sample rather than a probability sample of all enterprises, and they are not presented as one. Every headline states its base, nothing publishes below 40 role-tagged responses, and early editions are framed as directional reads. A smaller claim, fully backed, beats a larger one that invites the obvious critique.

Assets Each Edition Produces

• The published report, for Substack and the site, written to be quoted and cited.
• A one-page summary graphic led by the CEO AI Leverage Index and the Decision Distance reading.
• A short methodology note, so the report is citable as a source.
• A chief-executive cut, sent to the community as its own short piece.

Suggested Citation and Versioning

Cite as: Open Future Forum, The CEO AI Leverage Report, Edition 1, July 2026.

The Index is a recurring series, released as the data supports rather than on a fixed schedule. Each edition carries an edition number and a date, lives at a stable URL, and supersedes nothing. Prior editions stay published so the Leverage Index line can be tracked. Short handle for repeat reference: the CEO AI Leverage Index.

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Methodology and Disclosure

Methodology Note

Independence and Disclosure

• Open Future Forum runs the events and sells sponsorships, and Murray Newlands does fractional advisory work with AI companies, disclosed because this edition covers the market those companies sell into.
• Sponsors receive logo placement and a data appendix. Sponsors do not see, shape, or approve the questions, the analysis, or the findings.
• The report never ranks, scores, or recommends specific vendors, products, or executives. It reports aggregate behavior only.
• Any company connected to Open Future Forum or Murray Newlands that appears in the report is disclosed as such.
• The findings are the community aggregate. The report is not a lead-generation instrument and does not pass respondent contact data to sponsors.

This statement runs in every edition.

About Our Events and Open Future Forum

Open Future Forum convenes executives across a program of dinners and gatherings, held in partnership with leading institutions and co-chaired with senior industry leaders. These institutions partner on the events; they do not endorse or contribute to this report, which is editorially independent.

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. The CEO AI Leverage Report is part of its operator-level research program.

Sources

First-party sources. Instrument questions embedded in the application flow for Open Future Forum events in 2026, including the finance events (base 87 on the sign-off, budget, blocker, and return questions; 185 on buying stage; 8 chief-executive-titled respondents reported as counts), the YC founder events (92 buyer and pricing responses, 83 charging), the CISO Roundtable series (26 instrument responses), and the investor gathering (20 responses); plus application records and title composition across the twelve events in the July 2026 pull.

Third-party figures are drawn from the sources below. Primary external data sources link to the original reports; other sources link to the publisher, where the specific release can be found.

• Boston Consulting Group. BCG AI Radar 2026: As AI Investments Surge, CEOs Take the Lead. A survey of 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs. bcg.com
• PwC. 29th Global CEO Survey, 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries, January 2026. AI cost and revenue benefits, AI foundations. pwc.com
• PwC. 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories. Headcount, productivity, and wage effects of AI exposure. pwc.com
• The Conference Board. C-Suite Outlook 2026: Uncertainty and Opportunity, 1,732 executives including 771 CEOs, with Ipsos. CEO investment priorities and AI risk rankings. conference-board.org
• a16z. How 100 Enterprise CIOs Are Building and Buying Gen AI in 2025. Innovation-budget shift and spend growth. a16z.com
• Menlo Ventures. 2025: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise. Enterprise AI spend, growth rate, and production conversion. menlovc.com
• Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective. Accountable Acceleration: Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise, about 800 senior leaders at large US companies, October 2025. ai.wharton.upenn.edu
• KPMG. AI Quarterly Pulse Survey, US C-suite leaders at $1 billion-plus organizations. Agent deployment, validation, and AI cost visibility. kpmg.com
• US Census Bureau. Business Trends and Outlook Survey and AI supplement, nationally representative AI use at US businesses. census.gov
• MarketsandMarkets. Agentic AI Security Market, Global Forecast to 2032. marketsandmarkets.com
• Bloomberg. Reporting on Uber's monthly per-tool caps on agentic coding spend. bloomberg.com
• MIT. The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, MIT Project NANDA. mit.edu
• S&P Global Market Intelligence. Survey data on companies abandoning AI initiatives. spglobal.com
• Gartner. Forecasts on agentic project cancellations and enterprise software pricing. gartner.com
• McKinsey & Company. Research on enterprise AI scaling and EBIT impact. mckinsey.com
• Deloitte. Enterprise AI adoption by industry. deloitte.com
• NVIDIA. State of AI 2026. Industry adoption and return. nvidia.com

External benchmarks are used for context only. They are not affiliated with this report and do not endorse it.