
Welcome to the AI Copilot Podcast, analyzing the latest AI Copilot and agent developments from Microsoft and its partners, delving into customer use cases, and exploring how AI plus Cloud helps customers reimagine business. In this episode, Tom Smith shares details of a KPMG study that analyzes the size and scope of the business opportunity represented by GenAI.
Highlights
Scope of Analysis, Key Findings (00:21)
KPMG’s data comes from analysis of 17 million companies and 3 billion data points — data harvested an AI-driven value assessment model it developed; it also analyzed 7,000 public companies in deep financial detail. Key findings:
- 68% of execs plan to invest $50 million to $250 million in GenAI over the next 12 months but 50% of companies have not yet established ROI while they are scaling their GenAI work.
- The opportunity for the 7,000-plus companies scales all the way up to $136 million; that most optimistic scenario includes low, medium, and high complexity use cases
- The opportunity as a percent of salary costs is 21.7% of salaries when those companies also pursue low, medium and high complexity applications
- The greatest opportunity as a percent of salary costs is in healthcare, where the figure is 22.8% and that’s followed closely by financial services at 22.6%
- The biggest barrier to adoption is quality of data, which was selected as a barrier to adoption by 85% of respondents in the KPMG research; risk management including privacy and cybersecurity – was selected by 71% — and employee adoption (what we’ve often referred to as change management) was cited by 46%
I recommend checking out this excellent study.

AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details.