Majority of global CIOs plan investment in AI agents in next 12 months
Sixty per cent of global CIOs confirm their organisations are planning investment in agentic AI over the next year.
According to the Logicalis 2026 CIO Report, more than half (53%) of global CIOs believed generative and agentic AI will fundamentally disrupt existing business models within the next two years. This signals that organisations are moving beyond using AI simply as an efficiency tool; instead, they see it as a catalyst for major transformation.
However, the research suggested that the practicalities of AI adoption could present significant organisational issues. Some 66% of respondents said employee training around AI risk management and responsible AI was inadequate. Additionally, only 37% said their own knowledge enabled them to accurately assess the reliability and stability of their AI providers. Furthermore 14% said their organisation had not conducted sufficient thorough due diligence on all their AI providers, raising concerns around potential exposure and governance gaps.
Two-thirds (66%) of global CIOs were not fully confident that their organisation’s AI governance model can keep pace with the speed of deployment. CIOs in Ireland and the UK were more concerned than their global counterparts, with almost eight in 10 (79%) expressing the same opinion.
As organisations move beyond pilot programmes towards implementation, IDC found that the challenge is increasingly shifting from AI adoption to AI governance. IDC identifies lack of security and governance as the leading concern surrounding enterprise AI globally, cited by 48% of organisations.
Mairead Malone, Ireland country lead, Logicalis UK&I, said: “Our CIO research shows organisations are entering a new phase of AI adoption, where the conversation has shifted from possibility to practical implementation.
The report’s findings are reinforced by research sponsored by Logicalis and carried out by International Data Corporation (IDC) for its analyst brief Security in an Age of AI: Why data governance makes the difference. IDC projected that by 2029 more than 1 billion AI agents would be operational globally, collectively processing more than 217 billion actions per day, underlining the scale and pace of enterprise AI adoption.
“IDC’s findings also reinforce what we are seeing in the Irish market,” added Malone. “As agentic AI becomes embedded across business operations, organisations need to ensure governance evolves alongside deployment. Data governance sits at the centre of secure and scalable AI, extending across identity, permissions, auditability and tool usage. Organisations that establish these foundations will be best positioned to reduce risk while unlocking long-term value from AI investments.”
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