Enterprises across Asia Pacific are accelerating their shift from AI experimentation to execution, with 96% of organizations planning to increase AI investments over the next 12 months, according to the 4th edition of the Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026 – The Race for Enterprise AI, commissioned by Lenovo with insights from IDC. On average, organizations expect AI spending to grow by 15%, spanning GenAI and Agentic AI, public cloud AI services, on-prem AI infrastructure, and AI security tools.
Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) mirror this momentum with 95% of CIOs planning to increase AI investments over the next 12 months, reflecting strong momentum as enterprises move toward scaled adoption. These investments prioritize deploying and supporting AI infrastructure and AI-enabled devices, alongside strengthening data, security, and governance foundations, underscoring AI as a core enabler of enterprise efficiency, resilience, and growth.
“With 95% of ANZ enterprises planning to increase AI investments at an average of 10% year-on-year, the conversation has clearly moved beyond experimentation toward scaled business impact,” said Charles Ferland, VP & GM, ESMB, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Lenovo. “CIOs are increasingly focused on turning AI into a long-term competitive advantage, prioritizing initiatives that drive growth, improve customer experience, and deliver measurable business outcomes. As adoption matures, the ability to operationalize AI efficiently and at scale will become a key differentiator for organizations.”
As AI becomes increasingly embedded into enterprise strategy, driving revenue growth, improving profitability, and enhancing business & customer experience have emerged as the top three business priorities for CIOs in Asia Pacific.
From ROI Validation to Outcomes-Led AI
Building on last year’s AI-nomics focus on validating returns and business with 2026 Playbook highlights a decisive shift toward outcomes-led AI adoption. CIOs remain confident in AI’s value but are applying greater rigor to ensure investments translate into sustained impact.
88% of CIOs expect a positive ROI from AI in 2026, with an average anticipated return of 2.8x (US$2.85 for every US$1 invested). Yet, scaling AI beyond pilots remains a key challenge, reinforcing the importance of governance, operating models, and lifecycle management.
AI Adoption Expands Beyond IT
AI adoption across Asia Pacific continues to accelerate and is no longer confined to IT. 66% of enterprises are already piloting or systematically adopting AI, while 15% remain in early stages and 19% are considering adoption.
In ANZ, 64% are already piloting or systematically adopting AI, with a further 23% in the planning and consideration stage, highlighting strong momentum and a growing base of enterprises preparing to scale AI deployments.
AI is increasingly being deployed across customer service, marketing, operations, finance, and industry-specific lines of business, reshaping how enterprises operate and compete. Notably, half of surveyed enterprises report that non-IT departments are now funding AI initiatives, elevating the CIO’s role as an enterprise-wide orchestrator.
Agentic AI Emerges as the Next Enterprise Opportunity
Interest in Agentic AI is expected to grow significantly over the next 12 months. Today, 21% of Asia Pacific organizations report significant usage, while nearly 60% are exploring or planning limited deployments, particularly across telecommunications, healthcare, and government, where operational complexity and scale are highest.
In ANZ, interest in agentic AI has increased by 67% year-on-year, with 22% reporting significant usage. Despite growing interest, readiness remains uneven. Only a small proportion of organizations consider themselves ready for scaled Agentic AI implementation, with 41% requiring more than 12 months to scale meaningfully. Security, governance, data quality, and integration complexity remain key barriers.
“Agentic AI represents one of the most significant transformation opportunities across ANZ enterprises today,” said Debdut Maiti, Director, Greater Asia Pacific, Solutions & Services Group,, Lenovo. “Strong governance is essential to scaling AI responsibly and delivering measurable outcomes. With 52% enterprises actively developing governance frameworks, CIOs are investing in data quality, integration, and controls to ensure agentic AI drives reliable, enterprise-wide impact.”
Hybrid AI Becomes the Default Enterprise Architecture
As AI workloads scale, infrastructure strategy is emerging as a defining CIO decision. The Playbook finds that 86% of organizations across Asia Pacific now incorporate on-premises or edge environments as part of hybrid AI architectures, effectively making hybrid AI the default model for enterprise AI deployments.
In ANZ, 85% of organizations prefer Hybrid AI architectures, combining on-premises, edge and cloud. Key drivers include implementing advanced security strategies to address emerging threats, overcoming the growing complexity of managing cloud environments, and gaining greater control over operations and data – reflecting the region’s increasing focus on security, governance, operational resilience, and data control for AI workloads.
CIO Imperatives for 2026
The Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026 highlights three priorities shaping the year ahead:
- AI inferencing becomes the value engine– Over a model’s lifecycle, inferencing costs can be up to 15 times higher than training. By 2030, 75% of AI compute will be dedicated to inferencing, with 80% of enterprises relying on distributed edge infrastructure.
- Employee productivity rises as astrategic priority – Deploying AI devices to enhance productivity & local inferencing has climbed to the #2 IT Investment priority, alongside growing adoption of AI PCs, with 50% of enterprise PC purchases expected to shift to models with on-device AI agents.
- Scaling AI remains the defining challenge– While 88% of enterprises expect positive ROI, only around half of AI proof-of-concepts reach production, making scale – not ambition – the critical gap.
“From what we are seeing across ANZ, enterprises are entering a critical phase where scaling AI is no longer optional, it is a business priority.” Said Silke Barlow, General Manager, Infrastructure Solutions, ANZ, Lenovo. “Organizations are aligning investments toward infrastructure, governance, and data readiness to ensure AI delivers measurable outcomes. This creates a strong opportunity for enterprises to differentiate, as those that operationalize AI effectively will be better positioned to drive growth, resilience, and long-term value.”
For more information: Download the Lenovo AP CIO Playbook 2026
