Ai-enabled tumbleweeds

61% of companies admit their data isn’t ready for generative AI. They’re still buying the tools at an astronomical rate.
Every enterprise tech stack now has an AI line item. Copilot seats, ChatGPT Enterprise licenses, custom GPT wrappers, vendor “AI-powered” upgrades nobody asked for. The budget moved fast, the infrastructure didn’t.
The actual problem isn’t the models, it’s that most companies have their critical data scattered across SharePoint folders, legacy ERPs, tribal knowledge in someone’s inbox, and spreadsheets with names like “Q3_FINAL_v4_USE_THIS_ONE.” You can’t build intelligence on top of chaos. AI doesn’t fix bad data, it scales it.
I’ve watched this pattern play out across procurement, CX, and enterprise SaaS for 20 years. New technology arrives, executives buy it, and then the org spends two years trying to make it work with systems that were never designed to talk to each other. The companies getting real value from AI right now aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets, they’re the ones who did the boring work first. Clean taxonomies, unified data models, and ownership over who maintains what. The unsexy stuff that never makes it into a keynote.
AI is a turbo. Most companies are bolting it onto a car with no tires.