Flexential, a leading provider of secure and flexible data center solutions, has officially published the results from its 2025 State of AI Infrastructure Report, which assesses the integration of AI into core business operations.
Going by the available details, this particular report took into account the opinion of more than 350 IT leaders at organizations with over $100 million in annual revenue, including 100 respondents from companies exceeding $2 billion.
All these IT leaders would come together to offer insights into an environment where AI is becoming more mainstream. We get to say so because just 5% of organizations described their AI adoption as nascent, down from 10% last year.
As for the results, they include, for starters, a group 81% of respondents revealing that executives have taken command as far as AI initiatives are concerned, marking qn increase from the 53% who identified the C-suite as the main driver just one year ago. More on that would reveal how 51% of respondents expect ROI within the next year, whereas on the other hand, 21% have already seen financial benefits.
This whole development has also caused nearly one-third (29%) of IT leaders to feel overwhelmed by artificial intelligence (AI) implementation requirements, more than double the percentage who felt that way just one year ago (12%).
Having said so, 75% of respondents are still excited about their organization’s AI implementations. An estimated 71% even said they’re extremely confident in their ability to execute their AI roadmaps, which makes for a considerable increase from the 53% who shared that belief last year.
Next up, the report digs into those 62% of respondents who plan their IT and data center needs one to three years in advance, with 17% looking three to five years ahead. To give you some context, this strategic foresight is important because more than 44% of respondents would go onto identify IT infrastructure constraints as the greatest barrier to expanding their organization’s AI initiatives on time.
“The Flexential State of AI Infrastructure Report shows that AI has moved well beyond the experimental stage and is now a cornerstone of business operations,” said Chris Downie, CEO of Flexential. “Forward-thinking organizations recognize its role in achieving a competitive advantage, yet there’s still a gap between AI ambition and infrastructure readiness. The most successful companies will be those that build practical, scalable foundations to support the increasing demands of their AI workloads.”
Moving on, Flexential’s report also had 28% of respondents saying that, if their organization falls short of the goals laid out in its AI roadmap, it would lose market share to competitors. Beyond that, 26% said it would take longer to bring new products or services to market.
The stated perception becomes even more critical once you consider skill shortages in managing specialized computing infrastructure have increased to 61% from 53% over the past year. Not just that, well over half (53%) of organizations have encountered skills or staffing gaps in data science and data engineering roles, up from 39% last year.
Markedly enough, performance issues were also deemed to have gone up by a significant margin. You see, bandwidth shortages affected 59% of respondents (up from 43% last year), while 53% were impacted by excessive latency (up from 32%).
Hold on, we still have a few bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the way 55% of respondents said storing and processing more sensitive data than ever before is fueling heightened security concerns. For better understanding, the same figure stood at 39% in 2024.
Rounding up highlights would be a contingent of 79% respondents, who said they feel increased pressure to make infrastructure more sustainable compared to a year ago, and nearly a third (27%) are willing to pay at least 20% higher costs for renewable energy solutions.
“The pressure on executive leadership to deliver tangible returns on AI investments has never been greater,” said Downie. “With the C-suite now directly steering AI strategy, the mandate is clear: convert innovation into impact—fast. Organizations that can bridge ambition with execution will be the ones that define the next era of market leadership.”
