Some organizations are charging ahead with AI without having necessary structures and oversight in place.
More than half of U.S. organizations have no one formally in charge of their AI strategy, according to our 2026 State of AI for Business report released in May. No committee. No council. No coordinating body.
The report surveyed more than 2,100 professionals across industries and company sizes to understand how organizations are adopting, governing, and implementing AI.
The Number That Stands Out
When asked whether their organization had an AI Council charged with developing policies and practices, and considering the impact of AI on the company, here's what respondents said:
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Yes: 39%
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No: 52%
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Not sure: 9%
Fewer than four in 10 organizations have an AI council. More than half do not.
An Essential Piece of the AI Transformation
An AI council isn't a luxury or a corporate formality. It's the piece that connects scattered, individual adoption to an actual organizational strategy that can lead to transformation.
This is the group that sets priorities, writes the guardrails, and turns AI from a collection of personal experiments into a coordinated effort. Without it, AI adoption tends to fragment with different teams doing different things, with no shared direction, accountability, or standards.
The absence of a council helps explain why so many organizations describe their AI momentum as "inconsistent" or "siloed." When there's no coordinating body, siloed is simply the default.
Size of the Organization Matters. A Lot
Whether a company has an AI council tracks almost entirely with its size:
- 64% of companies with $1B+ in revenue have a council
- 19% of the smallest firms do
Mid-market companies fall somewhere in between, with adoption climbing steadily as size increases. Larger organizations have the resources and the pressure to formalize AI governance. Smaller ones are often still figuring out where to start.
To read the full report, visit https://smarterx.ai/reports/2026-state-of-ai-for-business
