CEO Gap Stalls AI Adoption As IBM Finds Only 25% Of Workers Use It

The CEO gap, the distance between the chief executive who talks about AI and the one who uses it every week, came up at every Silicon Valley AI gathering I attended this month. According to the IBM Institute for Business Value’s 2026 CEO Study, the CEO gap is stalling AI adoption. Executives average 1.5 hours a week with AI, and only 25% of workers use it regularly.

This same topic surfaced at HTEC’s Executive AI Dinner, Innovation in Action, Dreamforce, the AI Infra Summit, Stanford Board sessions and GetOnBoard Week. Around the HTECH table were Darko Todorovic, CTO of HTEC; Marcus East of Autodesk; Peyton Sherwood, CTO of Condoit; and Matt Lungren, a physician building AI Diagnostics for ophthalmology and imaging.

The research puts numbers on it. An NBER working paper, Firm Data on AI, surveyed nearly 6000 executives and found more than two-thirds use AI regularly, but for an average of only 1.5 hours a week. BCG’s AI Radar 2026 found the CEOs leading AI transformation spend more than eight hours a week building their own skills.

Ilana Golan, founder and CEO of Leap Academy, a career-reinvention company, put it plainly: “A CEO can’t delegate adaptability. If the person at the top isn’t learning the tools in front of the team, everyone below reads that as permission to wait.”

HTEC’s research of more than 1500 executives points the same way. They found that 77% agree that “AI value is constrained more by people and processes than tech.” Their Chief Strategy Officer, Lawrence Whittle told me that “as well as starting to use more AI, the CEO needs to do more on communication, enablement, and building trust throughout their business.”

The Consensus From IBM, BCG and Silicon Valley Is Where The CEO Gap Shows Up

Per IBM, The CEO Gap From The Middle

IBM and BCG Provide Insight Into Five Moves To Close the CEO Gap

The CEO has to go first and lead the way. But what else needs to happen.

C-Suite Leaders, including the CEO, need to: