May 11, 2026

Who’s Actually Winning with AI?

Everyone’s Doing AI. Almost No One’s Winning with It.

Every week I speak to a founder or CTO who proudly tells me they’ve 'started doing AI'. Usually that means two things. They’ve run a pilot that vaguely works. And they have absolutely no idea how to scale it. It’s like buying a gym membership, going once, then wondering why the six pack didn’t arrive on schedule.

The TechRadar piece by Nate Drake ("Everyone’s doing AI, but who’s seeing value?", TechRadar Pro) puts numbers behind what I see daily. Adoption is exploding, but real value is crawling. Consider this your friendly wake-up call.

The AI Illusion: Adoption Without Impact

The hype cycle has done a number on organisations. Many leaders now feel pressured to show something AI-shaped, even if it’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Pilots get launched without strategy. Vendors oversell. Internal teams scramble. And in the end? No value.

The irony is that AI isn’t hard to adopt. It’s hard to integrate. That’s where most companies fall flat.

Here’s where the gap usually appears:

• Projects run in isolation with no business owner.
• Data quality is… let’s call it 'optimistic'.
• Teams don’t have the right skills to productionise models.
• Leaders want results but not the organisational change required.

The painful truth is simple. AI creates value when the rest of your business is ready for it. Not before.

The Organisations That Are Actually Winning

I’ve noticed a pattern among the companies getting real ROI. They all treat AI as a business capability, not a tech experiment.

The winners do a few things consistently:

• They start with a problem, not a model.
• They invest in proper data foundations.
• They recruit cross-functional teams that understand both technology and operations.
• They build governance early, not as an afterthought.

Yes, this takes time. Yes, it’s less sexy than 'we built a chatbot in three days'. But value isn’t found in the hackathon. Value shows up in the boring operational trenches.

Your Team Is the Make-or-Break Factor

Let’s talk people. The companies seeing value are the ones hiring strategically. Not reactively. Not because their competitor hired a Head of AI and now they feel left out.

They know exactly which capabilities they need:

• Data Engineers who can build scalable infrastructure.
• ML Engineers who understand production, not just Python notebooks.
• BI and Analytics leads who translate data into decisions.
• Cyber specialists who secure the whole operation.

In other words, teams built for the real work. Not the shiny demo.

How to Actually Get Value from AI

If you want to be one of the companies on the right side of this trend, here’s where to start.

• Pick one operational problem that genuinely costs you money.
• Audit your data. Be honest about its quality.
• Build cross-functional teams instead of isolated silos.
• Create a governance model that scales before the tech does.
• Measure value with concrete metrics, not vibes.

And if you can’t answer the question 'what business value will this deliver?', stop the project until you can.

The Gap Between Using AI and Winning with AI Is Growing

Here’s my take: the AI gold rush has already split companies into two camps. The ones playing with technology. And the ones using it to reshape how they operate. The second group will pull away fast, because value compounds.

AI is not a trend anymore. It’s a capability. And capability requires strategy, talent and commitment.

If you get those three right, you stop being one of the companies 'doing AI' and start being one of the companies benefiting from it. And trust me, that list is still very short.

If you want to talk about building the right team to make AI actually work in your organisation, you know where to find me.

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