South African organisations whose AI ambitions outrun their budgets are seven times more likely to say AI has fallen short, according to preliminary results from DayOne’s State of AI Delivery in South Africa survey.
Of the more than 170 employees, founders, managers and C-suite executives who have responded so far, 62% say leadership’s stated ambition for AI is bigger than the resources allocated to it. A quarter (26%) call the mismatch significant, and among respondents who see that mismatch, 35% say AI has fallen short of their expectations. Where ambition and resources line up, only 5% say so.
These South African findings are helping local businesses understand the wider context and realities around the widely reported US statistics from a 2025 MIT Media Lab study that found 95% of enterprise AI projects don’t deliver financial returns.
In South Africa, the technology isn’t the problem, preliminary results show quite prominently, and is helping better ROI calculations on AI investment develop.
Team leads and managers feel the gulf between budget and ambition the most acutely, across the board. 85% of them report a mismatch between what leadership wants from AI and what it funds, compared with 51% of other respondents.
Contrary to popular belief, the technology itself is largely delivering, though. 76% of respondents say AI has met or exceeded their expectations. When it hasn’t, the most common reason given is unclear goals from the start (40%). The hype in the media and online was also a minor factor in setting those expectations. 27% say media or industry hype shaped what they expected from AI, while 47% formed their expectations through their own research and testing.
“Leadership announces an AI strategy and funds a pilot, but then wonders why all it has is a pilot,” says Liesel Bester, founder of DayOne. “The respondents to the survey so far that report their organisations are getting results from AI are the ones that gave it a proper budget and a clear brief. Right now, by our early numbers, they’re very much in the minority, though.”
Pilots that never reach production
AI projects in South Africa are generally getting stuck between the trial and the rollout. 43% of respondents say their longest-running AI pilot has been in that stage for half a year or more, and 15% say it has been there for over a year.
Among organisations that attempted three or more AI initiatives in the past 12 months, 45% have taken only one or two into production. And 38% have had to rework, relaunch or abandon an AI tool because people weren’t using it as intended, with 28% having done so more than once.
Employees are paying for their own AI skills
Encouragingly, 81% of respondents say their AI capability makes them more competitive in the job market, and 47% say it makes them much more competitive.
Yet, more than half (53%) say their organisation has no budget for AI upskilling over the next 12 months and 22% are now upskilling entirely on their own.
“Individuals can see exactly what AI skills are worth on a CV, so they’re paying for the training themselves,” says Bester. “Employers who leave it to the individuals themselves, risk paying for it later, though, when they have to hire those skills in at market rates.”
Heavy users still don’t trust the output
Only 24% of respondents trust AI outputs enough to rely on them for important decisions, and that figure holds even among people who use AI several times a day.
Trust, overall, drops as organisations grow: 32% of respondents in organisations of 10 people or fewer say they would rely on AI for an important decision, against only 11% in organisations of 11 or more.
The survey closes soon
The State of AI Delivery in South Africa survey is run by DayOne in partnership with OfferZen, Altron AI Factory, Pepperplane and Velocity Labs. It is open to anyone working in or around AI in South Africa, technical or not, and closes at 17:00 SAST on Thursday 15 October 2026.
Take the survey before the cut-off, and add your voice to help establish the current state of AI in business in South Africa.
One respondent will also win R10 000, in addition to getting a copy of the benchmark report and an exclusive invite to a roundtable after the report is published.
The full report will be published on 9 November 2026.