AI: Economic benefits cannot be substantiated

How far have German companies really come in their use of AI, and what economic benefits does the technology bring them? A Germany-specific analysis of the McKinsey report „The State of AI in 2026: On the Road to ROI“ shows that there is still a significant gap between AI adoption and measurable business value. For the global study, 1,719 executives and professionals from 97 countries were surveyed, 93 of them in Germany.

Nearly one in two respondents (49 percent) reports that their organization has already scaled up or fully rolled out AI. AI has also become widely adopted across various business functions in the German sample: On average, respondents report regular use of AI in 4.3 business functions, compared to 3.5 globally. At the same time, nearly one in two (43 percent) cannot quantify AI’s contribution to operating profit.

AI in Germany: Breadth Over Depth

The figures suggest that, in Germany, AI has so far scaled more broadly than deeply: The technology is being used in an increasing number of areas within organizations, but the transition to comprehensively redesigned processes and measurable economic benefits does not yet appear to be complete in many places. The results thus point to varying paces of AI transformation: While AI adoption is already spreading across many areas of the organization, this breadth has not yet translated into measurable financial results to the same extent.

However, that does not mean that AI has no benefits: 63 percent of respondents from Germany see at least a moderate benefit for their organization, such as increased productivity, higher revenue, or greater customer satisfaction. 14 percent rate the benefit as significant; globally, the figure is 19 percent.

„AI has now become widespread in Germany. However, progress in scaling it up has so far had too little impact on financial results,“ says Florian Bauer, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Head of Tech and AI at the McKinsey offices in Germany and Austria. „The next phase must therefore go deeper: moving away from the use of individual AI tools toward the redesign of entire workflows and processes that make a measurable economic contribution.“ Half of the respondents say that AI has improved employee satisfaction, while 41 percent report positive effects on costs.

„Depth arises when AI is integrated throughout the entire software—
”and is used in the product development process."

Holger Hürtgen,
Distinguished Partner and Director,
QuantumBlack

It is much less common for the use of AI to already be reflected in growth: 22 percent see higher organic revenue growth, while 36 percent report that AI helps their company stand out more from the competition.

Improvements in day-to-day operations and cost savings are reported more frequently than effects on revenue growth. The next step in the maturation process is to translate this utilization more effectively into comprehensively transformed business processes and measurable economic benefits.

Development in Transition

AI is already changing specific decision-making processes in software development as well. More than one in three (36 percent) say their organization has decided against purchasing at least one additional software product or feature because the required functionality could be implemented internally using AI tools for software development. Globally, the figure is 32 percent.

„The transformation goes beyond individual coding tools,“ says Holger Hürtgen, Distinguished Partner and head of McKinsey’s AI consulting arm, QuantumBlack, in Germany. „Widespread adoption means, for example, that many developers are using AI assistants. Depth is achieved when AI is deployed throughout the entire software and product development process. This also fundamentally changes the question of what companies develop in-house and what they purchase. (Source: McKinsey)