AI to claim a fifth of tech budgets in 2027, but few can show the payoff

Forrester used its 2027 technology predictions to put two numbers side by side that do not sit comfortably together. On one hand, it expects artificial intelligence to swell to roughly a fifth of all business technology spending next year, part of a global tech bill approaching six trillion dollars. On the other, its own survey of AI decision-makers found that barely one in five could point to a positive effect on earnings over the past year.

The firm does not read this as proof that AI fails to work, but as a warning about pace. Money is going into the tools far faster than organizations are changing how they operate around them, and without that second half, the promised returns keep slipping into next year. Nearly half of the buyers Forrester surveyed said they need to see a payoff inside twelve months to call the investment a success - a clock that is already running.

That distance between what AI costs and what it demonstrably earns is the problem Uprovd exists to shrink. Spending more is easy to measure; proving the return is the hard part most teams skip. We connect every AI investment to the outcome it was meant to produce, so a growing share of the budget comes with a growing body of evidence - not just a bigger invoice to defend.