- AI agents are delivering gains, though only 9% of CEOs called them "transformational" in a new KPMG US survey.
- Using AI effectively is "not plug and play," Tim Walsh, the firm's US CEO, told Business Insider.
- Most leaders surveyed said they expect to increase hiring as AI changes the skills they need.
Leaders of big US companies say AI agents are starting to produce gains, yet few report that the technology is fundamentally reshaping their businesses.
KPMG US released a survey on Thursday of 400 CEOs of major US-based companies. About four in 10 said AI agents had delivered significant improvements in efficiency or growth, while a similar share reported moderate effects in targeted uses. Yet only 9% described agents, which are designed to carry out tasks, as "transformational" for their organizations today.
Tim Walsh, CEO and chair of KPMG US, told Business Insider that there's a gap between using AI and the tricky work of overhauling how a company operates.
"It's not plug and play," he said.
He said he expected the share of leaders reporting that agents are transforming their businesses to rise over the next six to 12 months.
Most expect to increase head count
Incorporating AI is also reshaping what companies need from workers. The survey signaled that CEOs don't see the technology simply as a tool for trimming payrolls. About nine out of 10 chiefs said they expected to increase head count over the next three years.
That's a more upbeat hiring outlook than some leaders have offered in recent months. Various CEOs have said AI will allow them to get by with fewer workers, while others have said the technology will mean they'll need more people in areas like software engineering.
The survey results highlighted the workforce challenges companies expect as they adopt AI. Leaders identified worker skills gaps, training employees to use AI tools, and attracting and retaining talent as some of their biggest workforce challenges.
About eight in 10 CEOs said AI had prompted their organizations to reconsider how they develop employees. Three-quarters said that the integration of AI systems had made them reassess the skills required for entry-level roles.
KPMG has been reworking its own expectations for early-career workers. Earlier this year, the firm piloted a program for audit interns focused on "human-centric" skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and team leadership.
Focusing on 'high-potential' employees
In the latest survey, 86% of CEOs said that in the next two to five years, they expected to make adjustments to jobs, career paths, and team structures to account for "human-AI collaboration." More than eight in 10 said they are looking to keep and retrain "high-potential" workers, while a similar share said they are hiring people with AI and technology skills.
Walsh said KPMG US needs to hire more engineers and data scientists. And while AI can take on some work people once did, he said, there are limits.
"I need the humans to review this stuff," he said. "We can't just rely on these agents. They're not always right."
CEOs are spending to avoid falling behind
Some seven in 10 leaders said the biggest risk of business disruption over the next three years stemmed from "a lack of reliable AI access and advancement." That could range from AI model outages disrupting companies that have woven the tools into their operations to constraints on computing power and other infrastructure.
That's perhaps one reason many bosses still plan to spend big on the technology. More than eight in 10 CEOs said AI is a top investment priority for the next three years, while about two-thirds said they would allocate at least 10% of their capital budgets to AI in the coming year.
To successfully rework how they operate around AI, Walsh said, companies often must update their business processes, ensure their data is in usable form, and bring in engineers to automate workflows.
"Most businesses have been around for decades, and many processes haven't been updated for decades," Walsh said.