We asked 3,313 people who are VPs, heads of function, C-suite and founders how they use AI at work. They answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026. Here is how far along they are, what holds them back, what they want from AI next and which tools the most advanced teams use, compared with all 14,452 people in the benchmark.
Key findings
- Executives and founders are further along than everyone else in the benchmark. 16% are leaders, against 14% of all respondents, and 55% are still early.
- The biggest blocker is picking the right tools (31%), followed by the skills gap (27%). More people here name budget: 8% against 6% across the benchmark.
- Their top goal is to save time (36%). More of them than average want to grow revenue: 22% against 14%.
- ChatGPT is the most used AI tool (81% of those who named a tool), then Claude (75%) and Gemini (47%). Zapier stands out: 3% use it, against 2% of all respondents.
- Leaders lean on Claude. 87% of leaders use it, against 67% of those still early.
How far along executives and founders are with AI
The largest share of executives and founders say they are “just exploring” (29%). 8% say AI is used across their company and 8% are rolling it out to their team.
- Just exploring
- Testing a few tools
- Using 1 to 3 tools for real
- Rolling out to their team
- Used across the company
- Helping others with AI
What holds executives and founders back
We asked for the single biggest blocker. Picking the right tools leads at 31%. If that is you too: shortlist tools by the job you need done.
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
What they want from AI in the next 90 days
36% want to save time, 24% want to build their AI skills and 22% want to grow revenue.
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
The AI tools executives and founders use
People named 3.7 AI tools each on average. These are the 12 most used, as a share of the 3,104 people here who named at least one. Compare any of them in our AI tool database.
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
What the leaders use differently
Leaders are the 544 executives and founders whose AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company. They named 4.2 tools each, against 3.2 for the 1,810 who are still early. These are the clearest differences.
| Tool | Leaders | Early | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | 87% | 67% | +19 pts |
| Microsoft Copilot | 18% | 9% | +9 pts |
| Perplexity | 25% | 16% | +9 pts |
| HubSpot | 10% | 5% | +5 pts |
| Power BI | 9% | 4% | +5 pts |
| Salesforce | 9% | 4% | +5 pts |
- Share of each group who use the tool. Leaders: 524 people, early: 1,642 people.
Where they use AI at work
Writing comes first (70%), then research (60%) and personal productivity (59%). People could pick several areas.
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
- Asked July 20 to August 31, 2026: 1,744 answers.
Budget for a first AI project
30% are not sure yet. The most common amount named is under $500 (41%).
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
- Asked from September 1, 2026: 1,574 answers.
Who answered
76% decide, recommend or have a say in what their company buys.
Company size
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
Top industries
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
Say in what their company buys
- Executives and founders
- All respondents
What leaders told The AI Report podcast
“We figured that it was better to go more narrow and deep and really scale agents on what is our core process, which is recruitment.”
Denis Machuel, CEO at The Adecco Group. Adecco started with AI pilots scattered across the business, then switched to going narrow and deep: it picked its core process, recruitment, and scaled agents there first. If your pilots are spread thin, choose the one workflow that drives the business and go deep on it. Watch or read the episode.
“The only thing that makes those models different or perform differently for different businesses is the quality of the data that they're fed.”
Cillian Kieran, CEO and Founder at Ethyca. Don't agonize over picking the perfect model. Cillian says that for most enterprise work, like crunching CRM data, the latest models from Mistral, OpenAI and Anthropic perform about the same. What makes the difference is the quality of the data you give them, so put the effort there. Watch or read the episode.
“We want our AI to know everything, not just one slice of the overall financial picture.”
Braden Warwick, Financial Planning Product Architect at PWL Capital. Connect your data before you buy more AI point tools. PWL Capital had already joined up its CRM, onboarding, planning and portfolio data in a data lake, so it is building its own meeting-notes tool designed to draw on each client's full picture, instead of adding one more vendor plugin that only knows a single slice. Watch or read the episode.
Next steps
- Shortlist tools by the job you need done. The AI Report tool database compares 5,500+ AI tools by use case and price.
- Start with free tools. Hundreds of free AI tools in our database, sorted by use case.
- Get a plan built for you. The AI Report Pro turns your benchmark answers into a 90-day AI plan, step by step.
How do you compare?
Answer the same nine quick questions as these 14,452 people. See which of five AI types you are, how you compare with readers like you, and get a free 30-day AI roadmap by email.
Free. You also get The AI Report, the five-minute AI briefing, every weekday. Unsubscribe anytime.
Compare with other groups
The full benchmark: AI at Work Benchmark 2026, with every industry, role and company size side by side.
By industry: Professional services, Healthcare, Software and tech, Education, Marketing and media, Manufacturing, Nonprofits and government, Financial services, Retail and e-commerce, Real estate, Legal.
By role: Directors, Managers and team leads, Individual contributors, Consultants and advisors, Students and career switchers.
By company size: Solo professionals, Small businesses (2 to 50), Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000), Large enterprises (1,001+).
About this data
These numbers come from The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark. Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people completed it. This page covers the 3,313 VPs, heads of function, C-suite and founders.
- Answers are self-reported. People chose their own industry, role, company size and stage.
- “Early” means just exploring or testing a few tools. “Leaders” means AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company.
- People could pick more than one tool, so tool shares add up to more than 100%. Tool shares are out of the 3,104 people here who named at least one tool.
- Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (1,744 answers here).
- Budget was asked from September 1, 2026 (1,574 answers here).
- The role question changed on September 1, 2026. We grouped the old and new answers into six role groups.
- Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
- We never publish individual answers. A group only gets a page with 100 or more people, and we only compare groups of 30 or more.
- People who take an AI newsletter's quiz are more interested in AI than the average worker, so read these numbers as a benchmark of people actively working on AI, not a national average.
Last updated November 2, 2026. To cite this page: The AI Report, AI at Work Benchmark 2026, theaireport.ai/tools/benchmark.