By Sandy Carter, Contributor
Publication Date: 2026-09-29 12:30:00
The CEO gap, the distance between the chief executive who talks about AI and the one who uses it every week, came up at every Silicon Valley AI gathering I attended this month. According to the IBM Institute for Business Value’s 2026 CEO Study, the CEO gap is stalling AI adoption. Executives average 1.5 hours a week with AI, and only 25% of workers use it regularly.
This same topic surfaced at HTEC’s Executive AI Dinner, Innovation in Action, Dreamforce, the AI Infra Summit, Stanford Board sessions and GetOnBoard Week. Around the HTECH table were Darko Todorovic, CTO of HTEC; Marcus East of Autodesk; Peyton Sherwood, CTO of Condoit; and Matt Lungren, a physician building AI Diagnostics for ophthalmology and imaging.
The research puts numbers on it. An NBER working paper, Firm Data on AI, surveyed nearly 6000 executives and found more than two-thirds use AI regularly, but for…
