On January 27, 2026, Informatica released a report entitled Advancing GenAI Adoption: Key Insights for CDOs in 2026 in which “data governance and the trust paradox of data and AI literacy take center stage”.

Some of the report’s key findings are as follows:

• 47% of those surveyed have adopted agentic AI,
• 61% better data is making it easier to get GenAI pilots into production compared to a year ago,
• 50% using or planning to adopt agentic AI data quality as a major challenge to getting AI into production, and
• 86% will increase their data management investments in the year ahead.

Neuralytix’s research finds the report consistency with our own internal findings.

One of the realities we identified in our report entitled Priorities 2026, in which we posited that one of the challenges for enterprises in 2026 is taking its AI projects from development and testing to production. Informatica’s report expressly confirms our findings. It has an entire section devoted to “Taking AI from Pilot to Production”. Furthermore, recurrent words such as “hope”, “emerging”, and “expect”/“expectation” are prevalent throughout the report.

One of the areas that the report brought to light and admittedly an area in which Neuralytix had not accounted for in our research is trust. The report highlighted that AI “leaders must grapple with the potentially blind trust their employees have in the data they are using for AI”. This is a cause for concern for all enterprises. It validates Informatica’s commitment and history of success in helping its customers deal with governance and compliance issues. It equally supports Informatica’s integration of AI technology to help its customers accelerate their AI projects from development and testing to production with trusted data.

With so many regulations governing data privacy, usage, and geo-location, augmented by the socio-political factors that will undoubtedly drive additional guidelines, regulations, and legislation, investments in solutions such as those offered by Informatica (and its competitors) that help enterprises to provide its data consumers with high quality and trusted data is paramount.

But Informatica’s report also highlights another area that requires investment. The report indicates that 86% of enterprises will need to “increase data management investments for 2026”. Apart from investments in ensuring data quality and trusted data, enterprises have also made significant investments in their AI projects over the last several years. The report confirms that additional financial and human investments are required to bring AI projects to production.

Although Informatica’s report concludes that “2026 is expected to be the year companies start realizing the rewards of their [AI adoption] efforts”, what the report does not address, and in our opinion, is the single most critical concern for AI projects is ROI. Our research suggests a very grim reality. Almost no enterprise can demonstrate any ROI from their AI investments to date. As enterprises invest even more in AI, the ability to yield any measurable positive outcomes becomes increasingly more difficult.

On the bright side, Informatica’s report suggests that the “rewards [from AI] could be great” and that these rewards “are on the horizon”.