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CEO AI Leverage Report

Publisher: Open Future Forum Research type: Executive benchmark report (operator-research) Audience: CEOs and chief executives Edition: Edition 1 Publication date: July 2026 Canonical source: https://openfutureforum.com/research/ceo-ai-leverage-report

Overview

The CEO AI Leverage Report reads the position of the chief executive as the seat most likely to sign off on AI purchases while sitting furthest from the workflows where AI's return is actually proven. Its central concept is the "mandate gap": the CEO holds AI purchasing authority, but the proof that spend paid off is produced and gated by other functions (mainly finance). The report notes there is no CEO-specific room in Open Future Forum's event network, so it reads the CEO seat indirectly, through cross-lane instrument questions, room composition (counting CEO-titled applicants across other functional events), and adjacent external benchmarks (notably BCG's AI Radar 2026).

Methodology & Sample

First-party figures are drawn from Open Future Forum event records and instrument questions across twelve events in a July 2026 data pull, with figures reported as rounded floors of distinct applicants (invitation outreach that didn't convert to an application is excluded). Most cited figures use a base of 87 finance-room respondents or 92 founder respondents (any-mention, multiple selections allowed). The report explicitly states that its flagship planned metric, the CEO AI Leverage Index, has not yet been fielded and has no seed proxy in current data — this edition establishes context and baseline only.

Key Findings

  • External benchmark: 72% of CEOs call themselves their company's main AI decision-maker, per BCG's AI Radar 2026 survey of 2,360 executives including 640 CEOs.
  • In Open Future Forum's own finance-room data, the CEO was the most-named signer of AI purchases at 47% (base 87), ahead of CFO/finance (25%) and CIO/CTO (23%).
  • Despite CEOs signing the most AI purchases, AI founders selling into companies target other doors: 43% named CIO/CTO and 38% named business-unit leaders as the buyer, with the CEO not offered as an answer option in that particular survey question.
  • Proving ROI was the top blocker to further AI spend among finance respondents (54%), with 62% expecting a measurable return within six months — meaning the proof the CEO's signature depends on is produced elsewhere, on a short clock.
  • CEO-titled applicants appeared across every type of Open Future Forum event in the data pull (founder rooms, engineering rooms, growth dinners, security dinners, finance rooms, investor rooms) rather than in a dedicated "CEO lane," reflecting how broadly the role spans functions.
  • A deeper cut of the data found that when the CEO specifically was named as a signer, respondents expected faster returns (71% within six months, vs. 62% overall) and funded more AI spend from would-be-headcount money (27% vs. 17% overall) — suggesting CEO-signed AI purchases carry both more ambition and more pressure to prove out.
  • A sector-level cut of founder survey data found the "buying door" varies significantly by industry: enterprise software founders pitch the CIO/CTO, fintech and insurance founders pitch CFO/finance or the business unit, and health/life-science founders lead with the business unit — with pricing models (usage/outcome vs. per-seat) also varying by sector.

Related OFF Research

Citation

Open Future Forum. The CEO AI Leverage Report, Edition 1. July 2026. https://openfutureforum.com/research/ceo-ai-leverage-report

DOI

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