AI capability is increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries and companies, but technological strength alone does not guarantee economic value. Drawing together findings from IMD’s 2026 World Digital and AI Ranking and AI Maturity Index, this report examines the emerging geography of AI power and what it means for business leaders.
The research highlights significant differences in technological capacity, talent, governance, trust, and corporate performance. It finds that success with AI will depend not simply on investment or access to technology, but on organizations’ ability to deploy it responsibly and turn that investment into measurable, sustainable value.
Five findings for business leaders
- AI power is increasingly concentrated: A small number of countries and companies dominate AI investment, infrastructure, and corporate maturity, with the US leading at both national and corporate levels.
- National readiness does not determine corporate leadership: Strong national AI conditions can support companies, but they neither guarantee nor limit corporate AI maturity. Leading companies can emerge from economies with very different levels of AI readiness.
- Different models of AI readiness can succeed: The US leads through technological and commercial strength, European economies emphasize governance and trust, while Singapore demonstrates that technological and institutional strength can coexist.
- AI investment does not guarantee returns: AI-mature companies attract stronger market valuations, but greater AI maturity does not consistently translate into stronger operating performance.
- Talent, trust, and access will shape who succeeds: Technical talent remains a major constraint, while trust, responsible governance, and access to critical AI infrastructure will increasingly determine whether organizations can deploy AI successfully and at scale.
Explore the new geography of AI power
Discover what the findings mean for business leaders and how organizations can turn AI investment into sustainable value.
How much judgment has your board already ceded to AI?
Summary
Boards should ask how far AI may shape their judgment, and how they would detect errors in its output, says Abraham Lu.
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Three key actions for COOs in the AI era
Summary
Master AI-enabled operations: identify persistent bottlenecks, unite ops/data/IT in one hub, and design human-centered AI systems
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Anthropic and OpenAI might be building the future, but someone else may own it
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Wall Street is busy preparing for what could become the three biggest initial public offerings in history. SpaceX has already gone public, and Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to follow suit. Yet even as investors scramble to get in, doubts are g...
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An AI slowdown could be exactly what businesses need
Summary
The artificial intelligence industry has spent years feathering the accelerator of frontier model development in a fierce contest to dominate the technology. Now, it is considering something that until recently seemed almost unthinkable: slamming ...
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Firmenich D-lab: Where AI meets creativity
Summary
Firmenich, the Geneva-founded flavors and fragrances house, built its competitive edge on the tacit, highly specialized craft of its perfumers and flavorists – expertise sitting at the intersection of chemistry and artistry. By 2017 board-level anxiety about digital disruption, and credible signals that technology giants were eyeing the sector, forced the question of how a craft-based industry should respond to AI. Eric Nicolas, chief financial officer (CFO) and head of strategy, and Eric Saracchi, chief digital and information officer (CDIO) were charged with shaping that response. Rather than buy capability or partner externally, they chose to build in-house: d-lab, sited deliberately close to, while being organizationally distinct from EPFL's innovation park in Lausanne. The case follows d-lab from early experimentation to a string of commercial firsts: an AI-generated beef flavor launched in Asia in 2020, and an AI-created laundry fragrance in early 2021. Central to the lab's traction was a deliberate framing choice positioning AI as a creative co-pilot rather than a replacement and designed to win over skeptical, identity-invested experts whose value rested precisely on the knowledge AI now threatened to encode. By November 2021 d-lab had been named digital innovation of the year and had halved time-to-market while cutting formulation costs. The case closes on an unresolved strategic question facing Nicolas and Saracchi: how to move d-lab from proof of concept to durable advantage while deepening its integration with the wider organization, and extending its reach from formulation into molecular discovery. It offers a grounded vehicle for examining innovation-unit design, expert buy-in under AI disruption, and the governance of adjacent-but-separate digital capability.
Reference
IMD-7-2647
Copyright
©2026
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
DSM-Firmenich
Industry
Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
Available Languages
English
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Turn vibe-coded prototypes into tools your company can actually use
Summary
Generative AI has made building software feel almost free. A product manager describes what she wants, an AI model writes the code, and a working tool appears in an afternoon, impressing everyone who sees it. As a result, companies and teams that ...
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Are you letting the machines decide your metrics?
Summary
AI can default to measuring whatever is easiest to find and simplest for another system to score, regardless of intent. Time for some human oversight, says Robert Vilkelis.
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Three key steps for CFOs in the AI era
Summary
CFOs in the AI era: design data-models and workflows that maximize value, redefine productivity, and establish transparent AI governance.
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Luckin Coffee’s $300 million fraud should have killed it. Customers had other plans
Summary
On June 30, 2026, at 7:00 a.m., a coffee chain opened a store on the lower level of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The logo on its cups was a small blue deer. A costumed mascot named Lucky was there to work up the communal crowd. First-t...
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