Nearly 80% of Enterprise AI Buildouts Fail, and the Technology Isn’t Why, Solvd CTO Tells The Savvy CIO Podcast

CLEVELAND, Ohio — August 19, 2026 — Park Place Technologies released the third episode of The Savvy CIO, “Why do AI Buildouts Fail?”, in which host and former National CIO of the Year Bradd Busick and guest Skylar Roebuck, CTO of Solvd, examine why most enterprise AI programs never survive the trip from a controlled demo to production at scale.

The numbers are stark. A widely cited MIT study put the AI initiative failure rate at 95%, a figure Roebuck says was repeated by “every vendor in the world” at AWS re:Invent despite flaws in how the study was run. Solvd ran its own survey and found a similar result, with nearly 80% of respondents reporting AI initiative failures.

Roebuck’s diagnosis is that enterprises are still scoping AI work like software projects. In earlier technology waves, he argues, the transformative idea could be separated from the organizational change required to absorb it. That separation no longer holds. “The day of thinking of these buildouts as just traditional software – it’s kind of over,” he said. “You have to think of this as something very different.”

The conversation also explores the challenge facing CIOs as they balance the urgency to adopt AI with the need to build sustainable, long-term capabilities. “Most AI buildouts aren’t failing because the technology doesn’t work — it absolutely works,” said Busick. “They’re failing because organizations are treating AI as a technology problem when it’s actually an organizational readiness problem.”

Throughout the episode, Roebuck shares practical guidance for technology leaders looking to scale AI successfully across the enterprise while avoiding common pitfalls that derail transformation efforts.

The Savvy CIO is produced by Park Place Technologies and explores the budget pressures, AI adoption challenges, and security concerns facing today’s IT leaders, along with the people solving them every day.

Episode 3, “Why Do AI Buildouts Fail?,” is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
 
About Park Place Technologies
Park Place Technologies is a leading global IT infrastructure services firm with $1.2 billion in annual revenue and 3,300 employees. We help 25,000+ organizations in 180 countries – including half the Fortune 500 – fuel innovation and accelerate AI transformation by dramatically reducing time and money spent on IT infrastructure management, while boosting performance and uptime.

Powered by the world’s largest on-the-ground engineering team, a robust group of advanced engineers, and our global Enterprise Operations Centers, Park Place delivers significant cost savings on hardware maintenance, software technical support, hardware procurement, and more. We also streamline IT infrastructure management, freeing internal teams from day-to-day tasks, enabling them to focus on strategic initiatives — including AI acceleration.

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