Survey Surfaces Massive Amounts of Wasted Spending on AI
Techstrong.ai, Thursday, July 30th, 2026
Harness survey reveals 26% of enterprise AI spending generates no measurable return.
A Harness survey of 700 engineering leaders found that organizations waste approximately 26% of their AI budgets with no measurable business value.
For companies spending $1 million monthly on AI, this equates to roughly $260,000 wasted. The research highlights significant governance gaps: 52% lack clear cost ownership, 56% base spending projections on guesswork rather than data, and only 21% describe their cost-tracking practices as mature.
Experts recommend applying FinOps best practices to AI initiatives and rightsizing models rather than defaulting to expensive enterprise solutions.