The ownership gap: who actually runs AI decisions
Pearl Meyer's Q2 2026 Market Intelligence Survey finds only 34 percent of C-suite executives say it's consistently clear who owns AI decisions, the lowest of any group polled, even as boards assume the C-suite already has it handled.
TL;DR
- Pearl Meyer's Q2 2026 Market Intelligence Survey of 116 board members, CEOs, C-suite executives and senior managers finds just 34 percent of C-suite respondents say it's consistently clear which executive or team owns AI decisions, the lowest of every cohort surveyed.
- Board members (53 percent) and senior managers below the C-suite (57 percent) both report more clarity than the C-suite itself, an inversion that leaves the group closest to deployment least sure who is accountable for it.
- On whether employees can absorb AI-driven organisational change, 63 percent of CEOs say yes, against just 33 percent of the wider C-suite and 40 percent of non-C-suite executives, a confidence gap layered on top of the ownership gap.
Pearl Meyer, the executive compensation and leadership consulting firm, fielded its Q2 2026 Market Intelligence Survey in May and June, polling 116 board members, CEOs, other C-suite executives and the senior managers who report to them. Shared exclusively with Fortune ahead of its release, the findings land at an odd moment: Gartner puts total AI spending, including infrastructure capex, on track to hit $2.5 trillion this year, up 44 percent from 2025. The money is moving faster than the org chart that is supposed to direct it.
Clarity runs backwards through the hierarchy
| Pearl Meyer Q2 2026 Market Intelligence Survey | Figure |
|---|---|
| C-suite executives who say AI decision ownership is consistently clear | 34% |
| Senior managers below the C-suite who say the same | 57% |
| Board members who say the same | 53% |
| CEOs confident employees can absorb AI-driven change | 63% |
| Wider C-suite who agree | 33% |
| Non-C-suite executives who agree | 40% |
| Leaders across all AI maturity stages expecting significant impact within 18 months | ~50% |
| Below-C-suite executives who believe their firm has the senior talent to oversee AI | 78% |
| Global AI spending in 2026 (Gartner, including capex) | $2.5 trillion (+44% YoY) |
Ordinarily, clarity about who owns a decision should erode the further a question travels from the room where the decision gets made. Here it does the opposite. The cohort with the most formal authority over AI, the C-suite, is the least confident that ownership is settled, while the layer actually running pilots and the layer meant to be overseeing strategy both report more certainty than the executives sitting between them.
The gap compounds, it doesn't offset
Ambition for AI outcomes is currently outpacing the leadership structure needed to deliver on them. Additional investment without clear ownership will only widen that gap.
That line from the Pearl Meyer study is the report's central warning, and the CEO-confidence numbers show why it matters beyond an org-chart curiosity. Brad Jayne, a Pearl Meyer principal and co-author of the study, notes that roughly half of leaders at every stage of AI maturity, from firms that haven't started to those running enterprise-wide deployments, expect significant impact within 18 months. That expectation is shared. What isn't shared is confidence that the organisation can execute on it: CEOs are nearly twice as bullish as their own C-suites that employees can handle the change AI implementation requires. An ownership gap and a change-readiness gap sitting on top of each other is a harder problem than either alone.
What this means for boards and C-suites
- Name a single accountable owner for AI decisions explicitly, in writing, rather than assuming the C-suite has it covered; 34 percent clarity inside the C-suite itself says that assumption is currently wrong.
- Don't read board confidence as a signal that governance is working: boards report more clarity than the executives actually running AI programs, which suggests boards may be underestimating the coordination problem below them.
- Close the change-readiness gap before the next spending cycle; a CEO who is 30 points more confident than their own C-suite is planning against a change curve the rest of the leadership team doesn't believe in.
- Treat the $2.5 trillion spending trajectory as a forcing function, not a validation: money moving faster than accountability structures is exactly the condition this survey flags as risky.
Related reading
- Boards say the C-suite owns AI strategy. The C-suite doesn't agree (Fortune)
- Closing the gen AI paradox: a leadership agenda
Source: Companies are spending trillions on AI. The C-suite doesn't know who is in charge of it., Fortune.