note · 2026-09-11

Eight in ten people feel more productive with AI, 37% of companies see it in earnings

McKinsey's 2026 global survey of 1,719 respondents. Individual productivity gains are near universal, the effect on EBIT has not moved, and the 6% of high performers redesign workflows instead of inserting AI into existing ones.

For IT leaders and SaaS founders whose board expects AI results the P&L does not show yetyaab1 min read
Eight in ten people feel more productive with AI, 37% of companies see it in earnings

Eight in ten respondents to McKinsey's 2026 survey say AI made them more productive. 37% of their companies can see it in the earnings. Most of our conversations with IT leaders happen in the gap between those two numbers.

McKinsey's global survey, published August 25, 2026 (1,719 respondents, 97 countries): nearly nine in ten organizations use AI in at least one function and 44% are scaling it across the enterprise, up from 38%. 80% of respondents say AI improved their own productivity. 37% of the same respondents report any effect on EBIT at their organizations, unchanged from last year. EBIT moves for many reasons; the survey only says most respondents cannot see this one in it yet. The 6% McKinsey calls high performers are the ones redesigning workflows rather than inserting AI into existing ones: nearly three quarters of them did, against one quarter of everyone else.

What we see inside client teams, an IT department or a SaaS company with a backlog longer than its team: the individual gains are real, the mandate from the board is real, and nobody on the team can take one problem from spec to production and then operate it. That is where the gap lives.

McKinsey said it on X: adding AI to software development is becoming the easy part; the bigger opportunity is rethinking roles and ways of working around it.

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