Georgian, a growth-stage B2B investor helping companies scale faster via its AI Lab, announced the findings of its inaugural AI, Applied benchmarking report. In partnership with research firm NewtonX, the report surveyed over 600 executives of growth-stage B2B software companies uncovering the state of AI in business today and how AI adoption affects business performance.
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“Georgian is uniquely positioned to set industry benchmarks in AI, having evolved its 2008 Applied Analytics thesis to Applied AI in 2018—four years ahead of the ChatGPT launch,” said Leon Mishkis, COO at NewtonX. “What this new research shows is that the growth-stage companies leading in AI today—those achieving 2x ARR—aren’t necessarily the largest or best-resourced but are those taking a comprehensive, strategic approach. Georgian’s insights-led framework is a game-changer for those ready to shift from experimenting with AI to turning AI investments into tangible results.”
- Penetration: In just two years since ChatGPT launched, 81% of B2B Growth-stage companies are both building AI products and using AI in their operations
- Goals: Internal productivity gains is the #1 KPI (26%), highlighted across all functions. Competitive advantage ranks #2 (20%) driven by R&D teams. Revenue gains rank #3 (17%) driven by Go-to-Market teams. Surprisingly, cost savings is near the bottom (11%) and is prioritized by operational teams like IT, legal, finance, and HR.
- Top Use Cases in production for R&D leaders: Unlocking data & analytics insights is the number one use case (46%) out of 9 use cases analyzed. Cybersecurity (29%), tied for #3, is a logical reaction to the data & analytics finding.
- Production Status: Among those B2B companies committed to AI projects, 91% have at least one AI model in production, suggesting AI is progressing from pilot to production faster than previous technology evolutions. Across all models benchmarked, OpenAI has the most in production at 65%.
- Data Sources: First-party data and dark data make up approximately 58% of training data used in production.
- Barriers to Adoption: Costs (45%), unclear ROI (49%) and data security (60%) are among the top concerns or challenges for further deployment of AI.
- ROI: While the deployment of applied AI is advancing quickly, only 12% of the B2B companies benchmarked are seeing up to a 2x increase in ARR.
In 2023, Georgian released the Crawl, Walk, Run framework, which provides a comprehensive method for companies to gauge their progress toward achieving AI maturity and nativity. The 2024 AI, Applied benchmarking report found that companies that fall within the “run” category are excelling in a few key areas including:
- Focus on building new products that link ROI to revenue. Runners (40%) more frequently build new product capabilities vs. Walkers (14%) and Crawlers (4%). Runners are far more likely (5x Walkers) to tie the ROI of their projects to revenue.
- Allocate more team resources to AI. Runners have the same size team, but allocate a greater percentage of the team (35%) to AI vs. ~18% for others (Crawlers and Walkers).
- Adopt AI more broadly & deeply. Runners have adopted AI more broadly across use cases than others (Crawlers and Walkers). While Runners are the most active users of sophisticated models, Crawlers are more likely to rely on simpler API calls.
“Runners, who represent only 12% of the market, seem to show clear separation in AI ROI over the 49% walking,” said Ben Wilde, Head of Thesis and Innovation at Georgian. “Successful AI adoption appears to be marked by a unified effort among GTM and R&D teams, implementing AI broadly, not just in isolated projects, and being willing to engage in thoughtful experimentation rather than hesitant one-off projects. Companies committing to these areas are beginning to see improvements in ROI and marketing and sales metrics.”
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Source – PR Newswire
