Key Findings

  • Nearly half (45%) of business leaders say they are willing to pay an 11% to 15% salary premium for talent with strong AI skills, according to KPMG's latest AI Pulse survey.
  • The research highlights that AI investment is rapidly becoming a core corporate priority, with respondents expecting average AI spending to reach$207 millionover the next 12 months, nearly double the level from the same period last year.
  • "The potential value of AI is no longer in question," the Big Four accounting firm said in a press release on Tuesday. "However, realizing that value depends on companies' ability to re-engineer workflows at enterprise scale in an efficient and secure manner."

Deep Insights

The report comes as companies with large AI budgets face growing pressure to optimize investment strategies and demonstrate returns.

A recent Gartner survey found that CFOs rank acquiring and developing AI and digital talent for finance functions as atop near-term challenge。

"CFOs will find that hiring AI and digital talent to address top challenges is not easy and is costly," said Mallory Bulman, senior director analyst in Gartner's Finance practice, in a press release last week. "In the short term, they should focus on upskilling existing employees to bridge digital capability gaps and extract more value from existing tools."

KPMG noted that despite growing confidence in AI's potential, execution remains a challenge. When asked about the main barriers to return on investment, nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents cited difficulty in scaling AI use cases, up from 33% last quarter; 62% cited skills gaps, up from 25% last quarter.

KPMG found that most business leaders (87%) are prioritizing upskilling and reskilling to build an AI-ready organization, while 68% are focused on hiring new talent.

The report says urgency is intensifying as AI agent deployment reaches a tipping point. In early 2024, only 11% of organizations used AI agents, mostly in pilot phases; that figure has now risen to 54%, marking a rapid shift toward production environments.

"AI outcomes increasingly depend on workforce readiness," said Rahsaan Shears, KPMG's AIQ program lead, in a statement released Tuesday. "The limiting factor is not the technology itself, but whether people have the skills to guide AI, apply judgment, and take responsibility for results."

KPMG's survey covered 237 U.S. C-suite executives and business leaders, all from organizations with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion. The survey was conducted from February 17 to March 17.