New research from RBC Capital Markets turned up a string of unexpected findings that challenge many of the biggest AI narratives.
Every six months or so, Rishi Jaluria and other RBC tech analysts survey more than 100 chief information officers and other tech leaders to gauge spending on corporate IT. These annual budgets represent many billions of dollars.
And Jaluria is no AI cheerleader. He's urged caution when it comes to AI adoption by businesses. So I pay attention when he publishes.
This time, the message is clear: Companies are spending a lot on AI and are willing to spend even more.
"We came away encouraged by broad-based enterprise spending momentum into 2H 2026, with AI adoption beginning to transition from pilot to production," Jaluria wrote.
Surprise No. 1
For months, investors have worried that ballooning token bills would become AI's biggest headache. RBC's survey found the opposite.
Nearly nine in 10 respondents said token budgets are manageable, even though almost half have already exceeded their original spending plans.
Instead of scrambling to cut AI costs, most companies plan to spend even more on AI tokens in the future. (Token prices are likely to plunge, making returns on AI spending more attractive, so this makes sense).
OpenAI is way ahead
This result really caught my eye: OpenAI isn't just ahead — it's lapping the field.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents said ChatGPT is the AI model-based service they use most, compared with just 12% for Anthropic's Claude.
OpenAI also comfortably leads on performance, with 44% naming it the highest-performing model provider versus 24% for Anthropic.
Sustained, and very large, business adoption of AI is required for successful IPOs by OpenAI and Anthropic.
SaaSwhat-alypse?
The long-predicted "SaaSpocalypse" has failed to show up so far, according to this survey.
The vast majority of respondents expect to spend more on software, and not a single respondent expects to spend less. Even companies spending more on AI largely aren't paying for it by gutting the rest of their software stack.
From pilot to production
The survey also suggests enterprise AI has graduated from experimentation. Late last year, a similar survey from RBC raised concerns about enterprise AI adoption.
This time, more than half of respondents said AI is already in production, while another 35% expect to reach production within six months.
New pricing catches on quick
Meanwhile, hybrid pricing models that combine seat licenses with usage-based pricing have quickly become the preferred way enterprises want to buy AI.
That's a remarkably fast shift for a market that typically adopts new technology at glacial speed.
The 100% chart
Perhaps the most striking chart in the report is also the simplest: a solid blue circle showing 100% of respondents are allocating budget to AI and large language model projects.
Of those, 91% said they're creating entirely new AI budgets rather than simply reshuffling existing spending — another sign that, for corporate America, the AI investment cycle is accelerating.
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Alistair Barr is the author of Business Insider's Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was BI's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2007 for coverage of short selling and was a finalist in 2013 for scoops on the Facebook IPO. More recently, he won a 2024 San Francisco Press Club award for commentary. Got a tip? Reach out using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 415-341-4927) or via email on [email protected].ExpertiseAlistair oversees all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including generative AI, large language models, cloud computing, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.Popular StoriesArtificial Intelligence:It's getting harder to make big leaps at the frontier of AIOpenAI's AI-adjusted earnings numbers have echoes of Groupon and WeWorkDeath by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI worldCloud computing:Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.In cloud, there's AI (which is hot) and everything else (which is not)Chips:Why Intel is still so important: Real countries have fabsApple's made-in-the-USA chips signal a turnaround for the US's big semiconductor betEVs and Tesla:Tesla's AI supercomputer has a Silicon Valley town rushing to meet surging electricity demandTesla's Cybertruck is outselling almost every other EV in the USOnline Search:Google is losing its status as a verbA simple way to fix search: Bright pink ads
