Wharton AI 2025 Adoption Report (knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu)

Wharton’s 2025 “Accountable Acceleration” report finds generative AI has moved from experiment to enterprise standard: weekly use jumped from 37% in 2023 to 82% in 2025 (46% daily), spending spiked (+130% YoY in 2024), and 72% of organizations now formally measure GenAI ROI. Three out of four leaders report positive returns, 89% say GenAI enhances employee skills (yet 43% worry about skill erosion), and 61% of enterprises now have Chief AI Officer roles. Looking ahead, 88% expect budget increases for GenAI in the next year (62% expect ≥10%), and about one-third of GenAI budgets are being directed to internal R&D—signaling a shift toward custom models and in-house capabilities. For the AI/ML community this means the emphasis has moved from novelty to accountability and scale. Organizations are demanding measurable productivity and incremental profit metrics, tighter governance, training programs, and production-grade tooling (MLOps, evaluation pipelines, data infrastructure) to convert pilots into durable ROI. The trend toward internal R&D implies more enterprise demand for fine-tuning, private-model deployment, and integration work rather than off‑the‑shelf apps. The principal bottleneck is human capital: firms that couple robust measurement, responsible guardrails, and skills development will convert mainstream adoption into sustained competitive advantage.