Global enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerated sharply in 2025, with full implementation rising 282% from a year earlier as companies moved beyond pilot programs and began deploying the technology more broadly across their operations, according to Salesforce’s second annual Chief Information Officer study.
The survey said full AI implementation climbed to 42% in 2025 from 11% in 2024, marking a shift from last year’s focus on data gaps, security concerns and trial projects toward wider use of AI in everyday business processes.
The transition is also reshaping the role of chief information officers, especially in Asia-Pacific, where nearly all respondents said scaling AI is forcing them to expand their capabilities beyond technical expertise.
Salesforce said 96% of APAC CIOs reported a need to broaden their skill sets as AI agents take on a larger role in the workplace.
That change is pushing CIOs deeper into strategy and organisational leadership, rather than limiting them to infrastructure and systems oversight.
More than half of APAC respondents said they had improved leadership and storytelling skills, while 75% said they had strengthened change management and communication capabilities to prepare for wider AI deployment.
“AI is undergoing one of the fastest adoption cycles of any technology, fundamentally transforming the CIO’s mandate from just technical delivery orientation to primary architects of business transformation,” Paul Carvouni, senior vice president and general manager at Salesforce ASEAN, said in the report.
The survey suggests companies are becoming more confident in AI as usage matures. Among APAC CIOs, 86% said they felt more confident in their role than a year ago, while all respondents said they now know more about AI than they did in 2024.
Nearly all, or 98%, said their companies either already use or plan to use agentic AI within the next two years.
Still, concerns over data remain a major obstacle. Data security and privacy ranked as the top fear around AI adoption, followed closely by the lack of trusted data, the study found.
Yet only 29% of APAC CIOs said they were completely confident their AI investments included built-in data governance, and just 15% of IT budgets were allocated to data security.
Customer service has emerged as the leading testing ground for AI, with 84% of APAC CIOs saying they were working more closely with customer service teams than any other business function.
Salesforce said this aligned with its Agentic Enterprise Index, which showed the average number of customer service conversations handled by AI agents increased 22-fold in the first half of 2025.
The survey also pointed to execution gaps as companies scale adoption. While 80% of APAC CIOs said AI agents increased the need for closer collaboration with departments such as finance, human resources and sales, fewer than half said that level of coordination was happening.