The corporate race to harness artificial intelligence has entered a new phase, dominated by concerns about governance and control. While excitement around AI remains sky‑high, Logicalis Spain, a global leader in IT solutions, warns that organizations are moving faster than their internal structures can support.
This is reflected in the new Logicalis Global CIO Report 2026, an international study that analyzes how technology leadership is evolving amid the rapid growth of generative AI and autonomous systems. The report reveals that 94% of organizations have increased their interest in artificial intelligence in the last year, but, at the same time, 51% of CIOs consider that the adoption of this technology is already advancing “too fast.”
The finding marks a significant shift in the business conversation about AI. “The question is no longer whether companies should adopt artificial intelligence, but whether they are truly prepared to govern it, scale it, and assume its risks,” says Alberto Robles, head of Logicalis’ data and AI unit.
Moreover, the study points to a widening gap between enthusiasm and operational capability. While many companies already achieve results in predictive analytics, customer experience, or automation, few manage to turn those pilots into sustainable business capabilities.
In fact, 66% of CIOs admit they do not fully trust that they can scale AI beyond proofs of concept or isolated pilots. Additionally, 62% concede that the investments made have not yet produced clearly measurable business value.
The problem, according to Logicalis, “isn’t so much the technology as the organization itself.” The main barriers to deploying AI at scale are the lack of internal technical skills (88%), data-related challenges (87%), and the growing regulatory and compliance requirements (88%).
The report also shows that most companies continue to operate in a “learning on the fly” mode: 89% of CIOs admit their organizations are deploying AI without fully mature governance, oversight, and control models.
AI is already generating new security risks
One of the most notable aspects of the report is AI’s impact on corporate cybersecurity. The technology is not only helping automate defense, but it is also expanding the attack surface and creating new vulnerabilities that are hard to detect.
77% of organizations acknowledge having suffered cybersecurity incidents in the last year, and more than a third of CIOs say AI has introduced new “blind spots” in security.
Moreover, 57% say employees are already putting corporate data at risk through improper use of generative AI tools, while 66% consider internal training on the responsible use of these technologies to be insufficient.
Lack of visibility worries tech leaders particularly. Only 37% report having full control over the AI tools and services their organizations are currently using.
The rise of autonomous AI is changing the CIO’s role
The report also anticipates the next major wave of agentive—or autonomous—AI. While 72% of organizations plan to continue investing in generative AI over the next year, 60% already expect to allocate resources to systems capable of carrying out tasks and making decisions with minimal human intervention.
This advance is redefining the CIO’s role within companies. The study notes that technology leadership is shifting from merely deploying tools to designing environments where humans, algorithms, and external providers can operate in a coordinated way without losing control or accountability.
“Technology is no longer something that is simply used; it is starting to actively shape how the organization operates,” says Robles.
The transformation also affects the operating model. 94% of companies expect to rely on managed service providers in the coming years to tackle the growing technological complexity, and nearly half plan to outsource mission-critical IT services.
All told, the report reiterates the idea that the major business challenge in the coming years will not be about introducing AI, but governing it with enough trust, transparency, and resilience to turn it into a sustainable business capability. “CIOs no longer compete solely by innovating faster, but by preventing the speed of adoption from outpacing an organization’s ability to control it,” concludes Alberto Robles.
