26年中CIO调查：AI无处不在，但美国下半年信号偏弱？

Mid-'26 CI0 Survey: Al everywhere! But US signals weaker H2? (similar growth expected relative to 2025 and rivaling the COVID-era strength in 2021)...BUT!Regional spend expectations sharply divergedwithfull-year 2026 increased inthe US(+6Obps)offsetting sharp weakness in Europe(-13Obps)..ANDUS-basedCIOsanticipate weaker H2 spend.Thefull-year US strength was implicitly driven bya verystrong H1,but in less-good news the reported H2'26 expectationshave been reduced(on average)overthe last three months. On the otherhand Europe-basedCiOs aremoreoptimistic into the 2nd half, after a weak H1. +19173448390peter.weed@bernsteinsg.com +19173448506mark.moerdler@bernsteinsg.con +19173448316firoz.valliji@bernsteinsg.com Cybersecurity,GenAlapplications,andplatformsoftwareremainthetopthreeinvestmentprioritiesforCiOs,with incrementalspendingconcentratedamonghyperscalers.Infrastructureandapplicationsoftwarealsoremainareasofnetpositiveinvestment, although the outlook for application software weakened this survey, likelyAwS are expectedto capture thelargest share of budgetgrowth,while ServiceNowandSalesforcearetheonlyothersoftwarevendorsseeingmodestlypositiveallocationtrends.Although GenAl is a leading investment area, ClOs do not expect to increase spending onLLM vendors such as OpenAl and Anthropic,reinforcing the view that enterprises preferconsuming Althrough established softwareplatforms ratherthan building capabilities in-house. Luwei Yang+19173448342luwei.yang@bernsteinsg.com Armin Hadavi, CFA+1917 344 8463armin.hadavi@bernsteinsg.com Shelly Tang, CFA+1917344 8342shelly.tang@bernsteinsg.com Cloud adoption continues to rise, but enterprise strategies are becoming morebifurcated,with companiesleaning eitherfurtherintothe cloud or maintainingsignificant on-premises environments.Cloud-native adoption reaccelerated in thissurvey and public cloud remains the preferred destination for new applications. Hybridcloud remains thedominant long-term architecture,reflecting continued concerns aroundvendor lock-in and the need for flexibility. Among providers, Microsoft Azure remains theclearleader,while AwS maintains broadadoption and Google Cloud continues to gainshare. Alremains the dominantstrategicpriority for CiOs and is havinga growing impacton howwork gets done across organizations.While Al continues to drive IT budgetbusiness units outside of IT also contribute a share of Al spending. CiOs increasingly expectAlworkloadstobecloud-based and preferpackaged solutions fromestablishedsoftwarevendors over building in-house applications.Importantly,most do not expect Al to replaceenterprise software, reduce long-term IT budgets, or drive a shift from software spendingtoward hardware investments. Microsoftremains the clearleaderamongAlplatforms inCiOmindshare,followedbyOpenAl,GoogleGemini,Anthropic,andAwS.Applicationsoftwarecompanieswhoaretrying to bethe strategic Alplatforms have yetto provethemselves (ServiceNowandSalesforce).Programming/IT operations has clearlybecometheleading use case,followedby customer service and R&D.Thefindings also suggestthat enterprise Aladoption ismaturing,as organizations becomemorefocusedon provenusecases,buildmore internalAl talent, and rely less on consultants for deployment. INVESTMENTIMPLICATIONS Noimpacttotargetpricesorinvestmentrecommendations. 1.The expected IT spending for 2026 shows an improvement in US buta slowdown in Europe,with the global average maintainingat3.3%growthrate 2. Cybersecurity, GenAl, and Platform software are the top investment areas with incremental investment skewing towardshyperscalers3.Amodestuptick in cloudmigrationbuta significantacceleration in containeradoption,withAzuremaintaining itsleadershippositionamong cloud providers4. More ClOs are seeing increases in IT budgets due to Al projects and are increasingly hosting Al workloads in cloud5. Companies are prioritizing Al offering from existing vendors,and programming/lT operations has become the dominatingtopusecaseforAl MID-2O26UPDATE:STRONGEXPECTEDTOTALITSPENDING,BUTSTARKREGIONALDIFFERENCESEMERGE2026total IT spending is still expected to increase+3.3%YoY,nearly consistentwith the3.5%growthourE0Y survey reportedfor2025-thisremainsthestrongestgrowthsinceCovID (2021)...(Exhibit1). ...however,beneaththeheadlinefigureregional trendsdiverged sharplyvs.more equalexpectationsbefore:Us(+6obps)vs.Europe(-130bps).ThegapbetweenUSandEuropeanspendingexpectationsisthewidestwehaveobservedsince2019.US CIOsnow expect2026ITspendinggrowth tofurtheraccelerateto+4.0%(+60bpsvs.theEOY2025 survey), while European ClOs wentthe other direction,and nowanticipate growthto reach just 1.8%-a sharp decreasefrom 3.1% for 2026 expected in the E0Y 2025 survey, and 3.0% reported in 2025 itself.Notably, regional expectations werebroadly aligned heading into the year,as in our E0Y2025 survey,European CIOs expected IT spending to grow3.1% in 2026,roughly in line with US +3.3% expectations at the time (Exhibit 2). This weakening outlook