'2026 is the year CEOs must reshape C-suite': IBM study reveals what successful leaders are really doing with AI work in their businesses

Three-quarters of companies now have CAIO, compared to a quarter
After reconfiguring top management, middle management is now a major focus
Workers also need to improve and retrain their skills

A new study conducted by IBM among 2,000 global CEOs has stated that AI is forcing companies to redesign their high-level structures, decision-making processes and overall operating models as companies become increasingly automated.

In 2025, only a quarter (26%) of companies surveyed had chief AI officers (CAIO), but this year the situation has changed: three quarters (76%) now say they have a CAIO in the role.

Consequently, those with an AI-first C-suite structure are said to have scaled 10% more AI initiatives than their counterparts, suggesting that reconnecting senior leadership plays an influential role in a company’s success with its AI strategy.

Chief AI Officers and Other AI Functions Are Vital to AI Success

However, reconfiguring leadership is easy compared to driving enterprise-wide adoption. At the moment, only 25% of employees are thought to use AI regularly at work, although 86% of CEOs believe staff already have the right skills to incorporate AI into their workflows.

The next step after a top management restructuring is for middle managers to become technology experts in their own areas, 85% of CEOs believe.

However, it has taken years of AI being in the spotlight for companies to make the relevant changes at the top, so organization-wide transformations could be much longer. CHROs are likely to play a larger role in the coming years as changes occur in the workforce: between 2026 and 2028, 29% of employees are expected to need retraining for different roles, and 53% are expected to need to upskill for their existing roles.

As for AI itself, CEOs predict that AI will make almost half (48%) of operational decisions autonomously by 2030.

“CEOs delivering real results from AI transformation are not only deploying AI faster, they are also redesigning their organizations to bring together the best people with the best technology,” concluded Mohamad Ali, senior vice president, IBM Consulting.

IBM Vice President Gary Cohn acknowledged that while CEOs have always been tasked with “leading[ing] Through disruption, AI has increased the “speed and consequences of leadership.”

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