A new global study has found that the share of enterprises whose ROI fails to outpace their investment has remained at 57% since 2025, even as enterprise AI production capability continues to climb, according to Domino Data Lab, a uniform platform provider for AI-powered applications.

The Fifth Annual Domino Enterprise AI Report, which surveyed 639 senior enterprise AI leaders, found that 93% report improved production capability in 2026, up from 88% in 2025.

The 2026 findings confirm that the plateau has persisted for two years in a row and identify a second, related finding: a last-mile gap between AI models in production and the business users who need to unlock their value.

“Getting a model into production used to be the milestone that mattered,” said Thomas Robinson, COO at Domino Data Lab. “Our research shows that’s not enough anymore. The real milestone is the moment a business user can act on what the model found, and for too many enterprises, that moment still isn’t happening at the pace or scale of business, and with the governance regulated industry requires.”

Asked how business users actually access AI-generated insights today, the responses indicate a fragmented, largely mediated picture:

• 34% of organizations report a mix of AI access methods that varies by business unit, the single most common answer, reflecting a lack of any consistent delivery layer or standard experience across the business.
• 40% still rely on at least one mediated access method entirely: a scheduled report from a data science team, or a request submitted to an analyst who runs the analysis and returns results.

Expanding agentic AI use ranks as the top organizational priority for enterprise AI leaders in 2026, the survey found, tied with upskilling business users, both 38.5%, and leads every other AI investment type, including the governance infrastructure meant to manage agents.

Almost as many organizations are running agentic AI without governance as are running it with governance in place:

• 43% of organizations have agentic AI running in governed production.
• 41% are piloting (12%) or scaling (29%) agentic AI today without the governance to manage it, with those actively scaling outnumbering those merely piloting by more than two to one.

Governance maturity is the clearest dividing line between the two groups:

• Among organizations whose governance is fully keeping pace with their AI activity, 67.5% have agentic AI running in governed production.
• Among organizations where governance is only partially keeping pace, that figure drops to 17.2%, making fully governed organizations 3.9 times as likely to have reached governed agentic deployment.
• Among organizations with fully integrated AI governance, 75% report significantly improved AI delivery velocity, more than three times the rate among organizations where governance is falling behind (23%).

Financial services, banking, and insurance organizations, among the most heavily regulated in the survey, lead every vertical measured on both governance maturity and production velocity, the data showed. The enterprises succeeding here built governance infrastructure first, then scaled.

A Global Pattern, With Regional Differences

The findings hold across geographies, though the size of the gaps differs by region. The 2026 survey expanded to include 148 UK respondents alongside 397 in North America and 94 in continental Europe.

ROI tells a sharp regional story. North American organizations are markedly less likely to report ROI stuck at the same level as investment or lower:

• 51.1% in North America
• 66.9% in the UK
• 67.0% in Europe

Business user access shows the opposite pattern. North American organizations are far more likely to report no direct access to AI-generated insights at all:

• 12.8% in North America
• 1.4% in the UK
• 6.4% in Europe

The agentic governance gap is most acute in Europe. European organizations report the lowest rate of fully integrated governance of the three regions, at 42.6%, compared to roughly 51% in North America and the UK. That shortfall shows up directly in agentic deployment: nearly half of European organizations are piloting or scaling agentic AI without the governance to manage it, compared to 40% in North America and 38% in the UK.

“This year’s data shows two things clearly,” said Shawn Rogers, CEO, BARC US. “A significant share of enterprises still can’t get AI-generated insights to the people who need them, and the ones with governance built in from the start are far more likely to get agentic AI to that point safely. Put those together, and the takeaway is clear: govern early, and build the applications that turn AI into something business users can actually use.”