Gartner: 11 Percent of CIOs Successfully Balance AI Risk

Only 11% of IT executives are successfully balancing value and risk in their deployments by establishing strict rules for halting underperforming projects, according to a recent Gartner survey of 2,002 CIOs presented at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2026 in Orlando, Florida. While the vast majority of organizations struggle to pull the plug, those who do are finding clear pathways to measurable returns.

Establishing Strict Stopping Points in the AI Lifecycle

According to survey data presented by Alicia Mullery, vice president analyst at Gartner, elite CIOs distinguish themselves by building formal stopping points at both the pilot and production stages. Gartner found that IT leaders who establish guidelines for when a pilot should not move into production are 2.3 times more likely to be part of the top-performing 11% of executives. Similarly, those with clear policies for abandoning low-value initiatives already running in production are 2.6 times more likely to reach that tier.

They are shifting from just scaling everything to scaling value, which means they have a very strong discipline of quitting and redirecting resources to what is more valuable.

Alicia Mullery, Gartner

Despite these proven advantages, widespread adoption of termination policies remains low across the enterprise technology sector. The survey shows that only 31% of CIOs have established guidelines to halt pilot projects, and just 17% have policies in place to pull the plug on active production tools that fail to deliver expected returns.

Managing Surging Use Cases and Escalating Lifecycle Costs

The difficulty of halting deployments comes as the sheer volume of enterprise artificial intelligence initiatives expands rapidly. According to Mullery, organizations juggled an average of 10 artificial intelligence use cases in 2024, a figure that more than quadrupled to 42 use cases a year later. That rapid acceleration leaves many organizations adept at initiating projects but incapable of stopping them.

As technology budgets grow, nearly 60% of survey respondents report mounting pressure from executive leadership to demonstrate tangible cost improvements. At the same time, more than half of IT executives predict that artificial intelligence will ultimately increase their total cost of ownership. Mullery noted that many organizations make the mistake of budgeting for artificial intelligence the same way they purchase traditional cloud or Software-as-a-Service investments, ignoring the steep and ongoing expenses tied to token consumption over the technology’s full lifecycle.

Co-Creating New Rules of Financial Governance

Looking ahead to future financial planning, North American CIOs anticipate an average IT budget increase of 2.9% in 2027. However, Gartner notes that inflation will likely make that projected boost feel more like a budget contraction, raising the stakes for strict financial oversight.

To regain control, Mullery encouraged technology leaders to collaborate closely with their chief financial officers in the coming year to co-create new rules of financial governance. This includes designating specific teams to take ownership of token costs and demanding complete transparency from vendors regarding long-term lifecycle expenses. Several major financial institutions are already adopting these aggressive oversight measures.

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Organizations like Citigroup, like Bank of New York Mellon, specifically called out how they are putting in precise measures on how to manage these token costs, and in some cases, they are putting in weekly executive governance for how to manage these investments.

Alicia Mullery, Gartner