Companies are finally paying for AI, and paying big

• Companies are rapidly increasing AI spending, with 90% planning higher budgets for 2026.
• An RBC survey shows most CIOs now prioritize generative AI investment over all other spending.
• AI adoption is driving IT budget growth, with use cases shifting from cost savings to revenue gains.

For much of the past year, Wall Street and Silicon Valley have wrestled with the same uncomfortable question: Will companies really spend money on AI, or is the hype just outpacing budgets?

A new CIO survey from RBC Capital suggests that question may finally have an answer, and it's a resounding yes.

RBC recently polled 117 IT professionals at companies with annual revenue ranging from below $250 million to more than $25 billion. 90% of the respondents said their organizations plan to spend more on AI in 2026.

"Overall, we came away increasingly optimistic of macro/budget stabilization taking shape in 2026 and encouraged by the pace of early GenAI adoption," the RBC analysts wrote in a research note summarizing the findings.

CIOs are not only moving rapidly into production with AI systems, but they are also setting aside dedicated budgets to fund that adoption.

A striking 90% of technology leaders said their organizations are creating new budgets specifically for generative AI and LLM projects, up from 85% the year before. That suggests AI is becoming additive rather than substitutive in enterprise tech spending.

Even more telling: 60% of respondents said they are already in production with AI initiatives, a jump from 39% the previous year. Another 32% expect to be in production within six months.

This shift comes after months of skepticism from investors who questioned whether businesses would convert pilot projects into real spending. The survey data suggests that moment is now arriving.

CIOs overwhelmingly cited AI as the top category for increased software spending next year, surpassing cybersecurity and IT service management. And in open-ended responses, executives repeatedly named AI as their biggest area of investment for 2026, often paired with infrastructure upgrades and automation initiatives, according to the RBC survey.

Use cases are expanding beyond experimentation. Seventy-six percent of CIOs said their AI strategies now target both cost savings and revenue generation, a shift that reinforces AI's transition from a novelty to a competitive mandate.

Concerns remain — data privacy tops the list — but those worries are no longer slowing adoption. Instead, AI is becoming the primary force expanding IT budgets heading into 2026.

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