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Important points of ZDNET
- According to Salesforce’s annual CIO survey, AI implementations jumped 282% in 2025.
- 94% of CIOs report that the expansion of AI has forced them to expand their skills.
- The partnership between CIOs and CEOs is growing to drive AI transformation.
According to Salesforce’s second annual CIO survey, AI adoption has jumped 282% since last year. Unlike 2024, when CIOs were focused on addressing data gaps, strengthening security, and running initial pilots, they are now moving beyond that stage and extending AI across their organizations. In other words, the era of experimentation is over. The era of scale has arrived.
This change requires a change in leadership skills. While technical expertise remains important, leadership, storytelling, and change management will determine the success of AI implementation. In fact, 94% of CIOs report that the expansion of AI is forcing them to expand their skill sets in these areas.
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With the introduction of enterprise AI, the role of the CIO is also expanding. The CIO-CEO partnership extends beyond technology readiness to steering change across the organization. CIOs are now responsible for aligning leadership teams, developing implementation strategies, and ensuring AI is integrated into daily operations.
These findings are important because CIOs need to do a better job of gaining CEO trust when it comes to AI. According to a May 2025 Gartner survey, only 44% of CEOs believe their CIO is “AI-savvy.” The findings, based on a survey of 456 CEOs and executives, showed that even though 77% of CEOs believe AI will usher in a new era of business, there is a significant lack of executive readiness for AI.
Practical AI implementation
Salesforce’s CIO survey also shows that CIOs are increasingly collaborating with service leaders. Just under two-thirds (65%) of CIOs are working more closely with their customer service organization as a result of agent AI, more than any other group. Considering the maturity of a service organization’s data and processes, CIOs ranked customer service No. 1 for best use case, most enthusiastic, most ready, and most advanced in agent AI adoption.
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Here are some of the key findings from the Salesforce CIO survey.
- competitiveness: Last year, 43% of CIOs felt they were ahead of their competitors when it came to AI. This year, that number has increased significantly to 61%.
- Rapid increase in implementations: Full AI adoption has increased by 282% since 2024, rising from 11% to 42%.
- Budget-oriented: AI budgets have nearly doubled, with CIOs now dedicating an estimated 30% of this budget specifically to agent AI.
- Introducing agent AI: As many as 96% of CIOs report that their organizations are using or plan to use agent AI within the next two years.
- CIO trust: Three-quarters (75%) of CIOs say they feel more confident in their role now than they did a year ago.
- AI knowledge: 97% of CIOs say they know more about AI now than they did a year ago. CIOs also rated their companies significantly higher on various dimensions of AI this year compared to 2024, noting in particular: improved employee skill sets (+43%) and ability to identify AI success metrics/KPIs (+33%).
These results show that CIOs are moving from hesitation to hands-on implementation. This trend is not surprising given the strategic importance of AI in business, including agent AI. New research from Gartner shows that by 2026, disruption will accelerate and the use of AI will no longer be necessary.
From multi-agent systems to physical systems, AI plays a key role in Gartner’s list of the most strategic technology trends for 2026. According to Gartner, by 2028, organizations will leverage multi-agent AI in 80% of customer-facing business processes. Furthermore, by 2028, 90% of B2B purchases will be AI agent-mediated, and over $15 trillion of B2B spending will be driven through AI agent exchanges.
data challenges
Salesforce’s CIO survey shows that data reliability remains the biggest bottleneck for AI implementation.
- The main concerns regarding AI are data security and privacy, followed by the lack of reliable data.
- However, as a result of agent AI, only 35% of CIOs are working closely with their chief data officer, and only 14% of their IT budgets are dedicated to data security.
- Only 23% of CIOs are fully confident that they are investing in AI with built-in data governance.
Salesforce’s recent State of Data and Analytics report, based on a survey of 3,800 data and analytics leaders and 3,852 cross-functional business leaders worldwide, showed that implementing AI agents is as good as the data they have access to.
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This study highlights how data is a top business priority. 63% of business leaders say their organization is highly data-driven, a 10% increase from 2023. However, only one in two business leaders were confident in their ability to deliver timely business insights. The analysis report showed that while scaling AI requires cross-functional collaboration, gaps remain.
- 81% of CIOs report that AI agents increase the need to collaborate more closely with other groups (HR, finance, sales), but less than half currently do so.
- 93% of CIOs believe that the success of AI agent deployment depends on integrating AI agents into the flow of daily business operations.
- 61% of CIOs preferred investing in known vendors. One APAC CIO in the life sciences sector says that “proper integration of AI-related technologies into the broader technology ecosystem” is a key advancement needed for AI agents.
These points highlight the clear need for improved internal collaboration and increased investment in data infrastructure to unlock the potential of AI.
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Salesforce’s CIO survey reveals that CIOs are expanding their influence beyond technology. They are becoming leaders in business transformation. CIOs work more closely with CEOs than any other C-suite leader and are focused on implementing agentic AI. Nearly all CIOs (94%) say there is a growing need to expand the skillsets of their AI agents.
CIOs strengthened their leadership skills (61%), storytelling and narrative building (57%), and change management and communication (55%) to prepare for agent AI. There may never be a better time for CIOs to help their companies transform into agent-based enterprises.
