## AI at the heart of business strategies in Asia-Pacific Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a side project for Asia-Pacific companies, but a central element of budgets and planning. According to the *Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026*, 96% of companies plan to increase AI spending by 15% over the next 12 months. These investments concern generative systems, public cloud services, on-premise infrastructures and security tools to support AI workloads. Companies expect a return of $2.85 for every dollar invested. ## Overcoming implementation challenges Despite the optimism, scaling AI across the enterprise remains a challenge. Governance, operating models and management of AI systems over time are obstacles to overcome. The adoption of AI is spreading beyond IT teams, involving customer service, marketing, operations and finance. Interest in Agentic AI is growing, but concerns remain about security, data quality and integration. Hybrid models, which combine on-premise and edge environments, are becoming the norm for managing privacy, security and performance. ## Priorities for 2026 For 2026, the report highlights three priorities for CIOs: optimize inference costs, improve employee productivity with AI-enabled devices, and address the challenges related to project scalability.