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Enterprise AI Investments Are Failing: This Is Why

Enterprise AI Investments Are Failing: This Is Why

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Send us Fan Mail$684 billion has gone into AI and $547 billion of that produced no measurable results. Not some measurable result, or a slight measurable result, but none at all. 73% of AI projects never agreed on what success even meant before they started and they failed, creating a massive gap between what enterprise is expecting and what is actually being delivered.Colby Renton has sat on both sides of the table, whether being involved within Meta and trying to apply AI to campaign execution and optimization, as well as being in consulting rooms with companies like Nike and Coca-Cola when the mandate arrives from the top. In these enterprise situations, the same pattern gets repeated over and over. Leadership wants on the bus, mid-level teams are left to invent what “operationalize AI” means, some tools get bought, but processes aren't redesigned and the data (the foundation of it all) isn't ready. In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis sit down with Colby Renton, GNW’s VP of Go-to-Market and AI Solutions, to unpack why AI mandates keep failing once they leave the boardroom.Key topics covered in this episode:Most failed AI projects never agreed on success before they started. One study cited in the episode puts AI investment at $684 billion, with more than $547 billion producing no measurable results. Another figure: 73% of failed AI projects launched without an agreed definition of success. That is not a tooling problem first. It is a leadership clarity problem that shows up as shelfware, confused teams, and budgets with nothing to point at.Buying AI is not the same as transforming the business. Colby’s experience at Meta and with large brands follows the same pattern: a top-down mandate to apply AI everywhere, without a clear read of the underlying process, cost, or timeline. Tools get purchased. Processes stay the same. Data is not ready. The result is brand erosion, employee confusion, and spend that never connects to an operational outcome.Low-hanging use cases are where a lot of the money goes and where ROI disappears. Content creation and campaign execution are the default starting points because they feel easy. The episode argues those bets often produce more volume, not better outcomes. AI-written content fatigue is real. Human-in-the-loop is not optional if customer experience and sentiment are the actual tests of whether the investment worked.Abandonment is rising while budgets stay enormous. S&P Global found 42% of companies abandoned at least one AI initiative in 2025, up sharply from the year before. KPMG’s 2026 Global AI Pulse Survey showed only 8% of companies, with an average AI budget around $186 million, reporting tangible ROI. Progress can look like activity. Activity without a line back to a number is still a cost center.The stake for leaders is personal, not abstract. CMO tenure is already under pressure. Boards and CEOs want agentic environments they cannot yet operationalize. Competitors that move with clear strategy-to-action pull ahead while slow pilots age out in months. Colby’s close is practical: if you cannot name success as a number, who owns the outcome, and when someone last checked the results, that is where the work starts.Note: Signal & Stakes was previously published as Call It RevOps. The rebrand reflects a deliberate shift in the conversation, from tactical execution and operational how-tos to strategic decision making and the consequences that follow when senior leaders get it right or get it wrong. Same hosts, same honesty, different altitude.-----------------------Signal & Stakes is a podcast for people who sit inside the decisions that shape how companies grow, compete, and survive. Each episode surfaces a real decision, the signal that was there, what was at stake, and what happened next. Not advice. Consequence.Signal & Stakes is hosted by Raja Walia, CEO of GNW Consulting, and Akande Davis, VP of Operations at GNW Consulting.Signal & Stakes is produced by GNW Consulting, a strategic marketing technology and revenue operations agency helping enterprise organizations make sense of their existing MarTech investments. Through the GNW Orchestration Framework, GNW Consulting helps companies connect board-level priorities to day-to-day execution, identify where AI creates leverage across go-to-market operations, and determine where human judgment should lead. Learn more.Subscribe to Signal & Stakes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. New episodes drop monthly. Follow GNW Consulting on LinkedIn for episode releases, show updates, and content on marketing technology and go-to-market strategy. Watch full episodes on YouTube.
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