AI implementation surged 282% globally in 2025 compared to 2024, according to Salesforce’s second annual Chief Information Officer (CIO) study.
In 2024, CIOs were still addressing data gaps, strengthening security, and running early pilots. Since then, they have moved beyond that experimentation phase and are scaling AI across their organisations.
In partnership with NewtonX, Salesforce conducted a double-blind online survey among 200 global CIOs from 24 countries across the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and and the Asia-Pacific region in October 2025.
Findings show that, to keep pace, CIOs say the skills required to lead this shift have changed. Technical expertise is still critical, but leadership, storytelling, andchange managementnow determine whether AI adoption sticks. And this isn’t preference — 96% of APAC CIOs say scaling AI is forcing them to expand their skill sets.
This wave of enterprise adoption is also expanding the CIO’s role. CIOs have long partnered with the CEO, but as AI scales, that partnership is broadening — from preparing the tech to steering organisation-wide change.
CIOs are now aligning executives, shaping adoption strategies, and ensuring AI is embedded into everyday workflows.
“AI is undergoing one of the fastest adoption cycles of any technology, fundamentally transforming the CIO’s mandate from just technical delivery orientation to primary architects of business transformation,” said Paul Carvouni, SVP and general manager, Salesforce ASEAN.
“For AI to deliver value in any organisation, CIOs must move beyond the infrastructure works to become change agents — bridging the gap between raw computational power and the human-centric strategies that drive organisational transformation.”
Their technical priorities have evolved as well. In 2024, work centred on data clean-up, governance, security, and legacy systems. In 2025, CIOs are focused on building agentic workflows, integrating AI into core platforms, and scaling AI safely across the business.
CIOs are also spending more time with customer-facing teams, particularly in services where AI agents are already delivering measurable impact. Consistent with 2024’s concerns around data and security, CIOs say they are leaning more heavily on trusted platforms and unified systems to ensure their AI investments scale securely and responsibly.
Results show that CIOs are emerging as change leaders — not just tech leaders. CIOs report working most closely with CEOs (over other C-suite execs) as agentic AI has led to an increase in CIO scope and importance.
Among APAC CIOs, 96% say AI agents have increased the need to expand their skill sets. CIOs are building unexpected skills in the workplace – focusing on soft versus hard technical skills.
More than half (53%) have personally improved their leadership skills and 55% have personally improved their storytelling and narrative-building skills. Also,75% have personally improved their change management and communication skills.
The study found that data trust remains AI’s biggest bottleneck. The number one fear regarding AI at their company is data security and privacy, followed closely by a lack of trusted data.
However, only 45% of APAC CIOs say they are working more closely with chief data officers because of agentic AI, and only 15% of their IT budget is dedicated to data security.
Further, only 29% of APAC CIOs are completely confident they are investing in AI with built-in data governance.
CIOs are moving from hesitation to hands-on deployment with AI. Full AI implementation has increased 282% since 2024, rising from 11% to 42%.
AI budgets have nearly doubled, with APAC CIOs saying they are dedicating 29% of this budget to agentic AI.
Almost all, (98%) of APAC CIOs say their company either currently uses or plans to use agentic AI within the next two years.
Enterprise confidence is strengthening as AI maturity grows, with 86% of APAC CIOs feeling more confident in their role now than they did a year ago.
Unanimously, 100% of APAC CIOs say they know more about AI now than they did a year ago.
Further, service is becoming the proving ground for AI, 84% of APAC CIOs say they are working more closely with their customer service organisation due to agentic AI – more than with any other function.
CIOs rank customer service number one across key measures of agentic AI maturity, including strongest use cases, most enthusiasm, most prepared, and highest adoption for agentic AI.
