Two years into the generative AI (GenAI) era, companies face a pivotal moment—transitioning from piloting into scaling AI companywide—with pressure mounting to quantify potential returns and justify the spend. Executives remain willing to invest in GenAI to gain productivity and a competitive edge, but they struggle to quantify expected returns and set realistic targets within their business to help shape strategy, guide investments, and target their spend.
To help our clients accelerate their AI transformations, KPMG spent 18 months analyzing companies from across the globe to quantify the value at stake from fully deploying and adopting GenAI. The results are encouraging.
Key findings: Substantial GenAI value at stake
Our findings offer most companies ample rationale to pursue GenAI transformation with determination today. Our analysis of 7,000+ public companies shows:
Quantifying the GenAI opportunity
Two years into the generative AI era, companies face a pivotal moment—transitioning from piloting into scaling AI companywide—with pressure mounting to quantify potential returns and justify the spend. In this report, discover the business value at stake from deploying GenAI.
Breaking down the average potential
For the companies analyzed, the average annual GenAI opportunity is up to $136M. Of this, $12M is considered low complexity, $55M medium complexity, and $69M high complexity to capture.
This average GenAI opportunity represents 21.7% of salary costs and 10.7% of EBITDA annually, if the full potential can be captured. However, focusing only on the most likely opportunities—those with low to medium complexity—could still improve EBITDA by 5.2 percentage points.
Note: Figures have been rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place
GenAI’s impact across sectors
The total addressable opportunity varies significantly across sectors, ranging from 4%-18% of EBITDA annually. The eventual impact on a company’s financial performance depends on both the amount of time that can be freed up and how effectively it is reinvested. Simply reducing headcount is only a small portion of the full potential.
Figures have been rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place. *Professional Services sector includes Professional, Scientific, Technical, and Other Services (except Public Administration).
Value concentration within business functions
On average, the Sales and Front Office, IT, and Supply Chain functions exhibit the highest potential for GenAI value. Within each sector, the top two functions contribute approximately 50% of the total potential GenAI value, and the top three functions combined account for over 65%. However, the mix of top functions varies by sector.
Note: Total percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding. *Front Office (excluding Sales and Marketing) includes roles and functions such as administration, medical professionals, client-facing bankers, and other customer-facing positions / functions.
Methodology
Using our patent-pending GenAI value assessment model, the best available external benchmarks and third-party data, KPMG analyzed more than 3 billion data points to quantify the GenAI opportunity for 17M+ companies across the globe. We examined 7,000+ public companies in more detail financially; shared the results with over 500 client executives for feedback; engaged with 50 clients to refine our estimates with their internal proprietary organizational data; and are now helping many capture this value.
We quantify productivity gains by estimating freed-up time for knowledge workers using GenAI tools for different tasks, multiplied by their salary, assuming all time is reinvested into equally productive tasks. Conservatively, this excludes potential upside of time reinvested into more productive tasks, second-order benefits like employee satisfaction, and other types of AI/digital automation.
