Demand Shifts

CFOs Now Demand Hard AI ROI Proof Before Renewing Tools

KPMG finds AI spend holding steady but only 7% of firms have proven AI ROI, shifting hard budget scrutiny onto every GTM tool founders sell.

By The Pull Desk·July 30, 2026·5 min read
Black title card reading "CFOs Now Demand Hard AI ROI Proof Before Renewing Tools", tagged Demand Shifts, from The Pull by MagnetizeX
The short version

THE SHORT VERSION: KPMG's Global AI Pulse survey of more than 2,000 C-suite leaders finds AI spending holding steady at roughly 188 million dollars on average, but only 7% of organizations have actually established AI ROI they can point to. Budget is shifting from open-ended experimentation toward hard accountability, and marketing and GTM tools bought on faith alone are the likely casualties this cycle.

What happened

KPMG's Global AI Pulse: Q2 2026 survey, fielded from late April to late May among more than 2,000 C-suite and senior leaders across 20 countries, found AI investment holding roughly flat quarter over quarter even as 79% of leaders now call AI a key investment priority, up from 74% just one quarter prior. The real catch is accountability: only 7% of organizations report having established AI ROI in any measurable way, 42% say they have only partial visibility into how their AI spending actually accumulates across tools and teams, and 24% say they face active investor pressure right now to prove value. KPMG frames this as a shift from an open experimentation phase into a pragmatic phase, where the strongest outcomes come from governance and cost visibility, not simply from deployment volume.

Why AI ROI scrutiny is a demand shift, not a budget cut

From the publisher

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Total AI spend isn't falling industry-wide. What's actually changing is who has to justify a renewal at the next budget cycle. Tools bought last year on a demo and a promise are now being asked to show one specific, attributable number, and marketing and GTM software is an easy target because its ROI has always been harder to isolate cleanly than a straightforward sales quota. Founders selling into procurement right now should expect a cost-visibility question much earlier in the sales cycle than they got even twelve months ago.

  1. Build an AI ROI answer before the renewal conversation
    If you sell AI-powered software, have one specific, attributable metric ready before a customer's finance team ever asks for it directly. Cost-per-outcome beats a generic usage dashboard when the buyer in the room is a CFO, not a day-to-day practitioner.
  2. Expect a cost-visibility question in every enterprise deal
    42% of KPMG's respondents can only partially trace their own AI spend today across tools and teams. Build a simple cost-attribution view into your product now, so your buyer's finance team doesn't have to build one manually around you later.
  3. Target the 24% under active investor pressure directly
    Buyers facing real investor scrutiny on AI ROI are actively looking for vendors who can help them prove value internally to their own board. Lead your next sales deck with a customer's before-and-after number, not a generic feature list nobody remembers.

By the numbers: KPMG found average AI spend essentially flat at 188 million dollars against 186 million the prior quarter, even as investment priority rankings among leaders rose a full five points in the same period.

What to do this week

Pull together one customer's before-and-after number this week, hours saved, pipeline sourced, or cost avoided, and put it on the first slide of your next sales deck instead of the third. If you don't have one clean example yet, ask your best customer for it over a 15-minute call this week, and build the habit of capturing that number every time a renewal closes successfully.

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