Austin, Texas, USA, September 10, 2026

Futurum’s 2H 2026 CIO survey finds AI spending running over plan at nearly half of enterprises, and traces where the money comes from to cover the gap.

Nearly half of enterprises are running their AI spend over budget. About 46.9% of organizations report actual AI spend exceeding their planned AI budget, according to new research from The Futurum Group, compared with just 5.6% that came in below plan. Drawn from a survey of 1,636 global enterprise technology decision makers, the finding marks a shift in the AI budget conversation from whether to adopt to how to fund spending that routinely exceeds the plan.

The overrun is now the norm rather than the exception (see Figure 1). A combined 46.9% of organizations report AI spend over budget, splitting into 35.6% moderately above plan and 11.3% substantially above, or 767 of 1,636 respondents. Only 31.8% report spending approximately in line with the plan, and a further 10.0% say they have no formal AI budget to measure against. Just 5.6% report spending below plan.

Figure 1: AI Spend Relative to Budget, 2H 2026

“The AI budget question has moved from whether to adopt to how to fund it,” said Mitch Ashley, VP and Practice Lead, CIO and Technology Buyers at Futurum. “When nearly half of organizations are running AI spend over budget and only one in six responds by slowing the initiative down, the budget has stopped being a control. The real story is where the money comes from to cover the gap.”

The research traces what happens once the overrun appears:

• Among the 767 organizations running over plan, 47.6% ask for more budget and 43.3% absorb the overrun and settle it later, while only 17.2% pause or reduce the AI initiative itself.
• When the gap is funded by reallocating within IT, external labor is cut first: 60.9% of the 297 reallocating organizations reduce external contractors and consultants.
• AI-driven IT headcount reductions land on support and production roles: among the 327 organizations making cuts, IT support and helpdesk (60.2%) and software and application development (58.4%) are most affected.
• One organization in 10 (10.0%) reports no formal AI budget to measure against, a governance gap in its own right.
• Forward spending intent confirms the priority: ML and AI lead every sector on Net Score at 50.5, more than 11 points clear of the next category.

Where the overrun is absorbed says as much as its size. Among the 767 organizations running over plan, the most common responses are to request more budget (47.6%) or to absorb the cost and reconcile it later (43.3%); only 17.2% slow the initiative down. When the gap is closed by reallocating within the IT budget, external labor takes the first cut, with 60.9% of the 297 reallocating organizations reducing external contractors and consultants. Notably, 23.1% of over-plan organizations reallocate from a non-IT business unit budget, direct evidence that AI funding authority has begun to move outside the IT organization.

“For vendors, the exposure is clearest in external services,” Ashley noted. “Contractors and consultants are the first line cut to fund an AI spend over budget, and the two services sectors are the only categories in the study with negative spending intent. The buyers who win the next cycle will fund the governance layer explicitly rather than let it surface as an overrun.”

The larger signal is structural. An AI spend that is over-budget for 46.9% of organizations, funded by cutting external labor and, increasingly, by budgets outside IT, is not a set of unrelated movements but a single shift in where enterprise value sits. For technology buyers, the discipline now is to fund AI governance and consumption deliberately; for vendors, it is to sell to the outcome owner who controls the AI line, not the production buyer whose budget is being reallocated away.

Read more in the report, “2H 2026 CIO & Technology Buyers Global Enterprise Decision Maker Survey Report” on the Futurum Intelligence Platform. Non-subscribers click here for more information.

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