The question a CEO actually wants answered is “what is our AI strategy.” What the CIO or CTO gives back is usually a personal opinion, because their job has been maintaining infrastructure, not building foresight. There is a deeper frustration underneath this, one I hear from CEOs directly: they wanted their technology leader to bring the strategy question to them first, unprompted. Instead they have to go hunting for it.
Why does spending money on AI not produce a strategy?
Because money and strategy are different things, and most companies buy one while assuming it produces the other. I see two failure patterns inside companies that did spend real budget on AI. The first is the pilot project designed for a demo: built to impress a room once, never architected for commercialisation or scale, so the money is spent and nothing comes back. The second is the “AI-first” token budget: real spend on usage, with no strategy behind it at all.
What’s the actual difference between implementing AI and having a strategy?
Implementing AI is not a strategy, and the distinction matters more than it sounds. It is the difference between buying an expensive aeroplane and having a destination. Burning tokens without a destination is the same decision as buying the plane and simply wanting to fly. You have real capability and nowhere it is taking you.
Is this actually as common as it sounds?
Yes. According to WRITER’s 2026 State of AI report, a survey of 2,400 global leaders, 79% of organisations face challenges adopting AI. That is not a technology-immaturity number. It is a strategy-immaturity number, and it explains why so many companies can point to AI spending on a balance sheet and nothing to show for it on the other side.
What does a CEO actually need instead of a bigger AI budget?
A destination before the plane, not after it. That is the whole substance of what a strategic AI advisor does differently from an internal technology leader or a bigger token budget: naming the destination is the job, not a byproduct of spending enough to eventually find one.
If you are the CEO going hunting for the strategy question no one has brought to you, that is the conversation I have with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. Work with Thomas.
Questions this article answers
Why doesn’t spending money on AI produce a strategy? Because implementation and strategy are different things. Most companies buy AI capability and assume a destination for it will follow, but the destination has to be named first, not discovered afterwards.
What are the two most common ways AI spending gets wasted? Pilot projects built to impress a room once rather than to scale, and “AI-first” token budgets spent on usage with no strategy behind them.
How common is this problem? Very. 79% of organisations face challenges adopting AI, according to WRITER’s 2026 State of AI report, a survey of 2,400 global leaders.
What actually fixes it? Naming the destination before spending on the capability, which is what a strategic AI advisor does differently from simply expanding an internal team’s budget or headcount.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor (MerkabaPhi AS, Oslo), with 450+ keynotes across 30+ countries. Enquiries: anglero.com.