Salesforce Releases CIO Study 2026 as CIOs Enter the Era of Scale

Based on global research with NewtonX, the CIO Study finds AI adoption up 282% year over year as enterprises move from AI pilots to large-scale deployment — and hit bottlenecks in data quality, security, and trust.

Salesforce has released its annual CIO Study for 2026, based on a double-blind online survey of 200 CIOs across 24 countries conducted in partnership with NewtonX. 

The research marks a clear inflection point: full AI implementation has jumped from 11% in 2024 to 42% in 2025 — a 282% increase — as CIOs move out of pilot mode and into the “era of scale.” AI budgets have nearly doubled, with CIOs allocating about 30% of that spend to agentic AI, and 96% say their company either uses or plans to use agentic AI within the next two years.

At the same time, trust and data are emerging as the new bottlenecks. CIOs cite data security, privacy, and a lack of trusted data as their top fears around AI — even as just 14% of IT budgets go to data security and fewer than a quarter of CIOs feel completely confident they’re investing in AI with built-in governance.

“CIOs are turning AI ambition into action and scaling agentic AI in real, measurable ways,” said Salesforce CIO Daniel Shmitt. “Embedding AI into the flow of work and building trust into every step helps everyone move faster and with more confidence.”

CIOs step into a bigger role

The Salesforce + NewtonX study also shows how fast the CIO remit is expanding:

• From tech lead to change leader. CIOs report working more closely with CEOs than any other C-suite role as AI decisions increasingly drive business strategy, not just IT roadmaps.
• Confidence and ownership are up. Three-quarters of CIOs feel more confident in their role than a year ago, and 97% say they know more about AI than they did in 2024.
• Soft skills are now critical skills. To make agentic AI stick, CIOs say they’re actively upskilling in leadership (61%), storytelling and narrative building (57%), and change management and communication (55%).
• Service is the proving ground. CIOs rank customer service as the #1 function for agentic AI use cases, enthusiasm, preparedness, and adoption — with examples such as DeVry University and Adobe Population Health already reporting major time savings and operational impact.

How the tech press is using the study

Within days of launch, the Salesforce CIO Study was being used as shorthand for “what’s really happening” with AI and the CIO role. CIO Dive leaned on the research to frame CIOs as gaining stature in the C-suite as AI moves from side project to core strategy. TechRadar Pro picked up the tension side of the story, pointing to CIOs inheriting AI responsibility without always getting matching investment in data security and governance. Techstrong.ai focused on the shift from experiments to production, while diginomica used the study to argue that the debate has moved past whether enterprises will use AI and into how they’ll scale it responsibly.

Together, Salesforce and NewtonX are turning CIO perspectives into a data-backed view of what it really takes to scale AI in the enterprise.