Asia Pacific firms quietly prepare massive AI spending surge in 2026
Enterprises across Asia Pacific are accelerating the shift from artificial intelligence experimentation to full-scale execution, with nearly all organizations planning to increase AI spending in 2026, according to the fourth edition of the Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026 produced with insights from IDC.
The study found that 96 percent of enterprises across the region expect to raise AI investments by an average of 15 percent over the next 12 months, covering generative AI, agentic AI, cloud-based AI services, on-premise infrastructure, and security tools.
ASEAN+ markets, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, showed the same level of commitment, underscoring AI’s growing role as a core pillar of enterprise competitiveness.
CIO priorities are increasingly aligned with tangible business outcomes, with revenue growth, profitability, and improved customer experience emerging as the top drivers of AI strategy.
While confidence in AI remains strong, organizations are applying stricter discipline to ensure investments deliver measurable results.
Nearly nine in 10 Asia Pacific enterprises expect a positive return on AI investments in 2026, with an average projected return of almost three times the amount invested, even as many struggle to scale projects beyond pilot stages.
AI adoption is also expanding beyond IT departments. About two-thirds of organizations in Asia Pacific and ASEAN+ are already piloting or systematically deploying AI across functions such as customer service, marketing, operations, and finance.
Half of surveyed firms reported that non-IT units are now directly funding AI initiatives, reshaping the CIO’s role into that of an enterprise-wide coordinator.
Interest in agentic AI is rising sharply, with usage expected to double in the coming year, particularly in sectors like telecommunications, healthcare, and government.
However, readiness remains uneven, as only a small share of organizations consider themselves prepared for large-scale deployment due to security, governance, and integration challenges.
As AI workloads grow, hybrid AI architectures are becoming the default, combining on-premise, edge, and cloud environments to balance performance, compliance, and cost.
Lenovo’s playbook identifies scaling AI, managing inferencing costs, and boosting employee productivity through AI-enabled devices as defining challenges for enterprise leaders in 2026.
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