Corporate America is heading into 2026 expecting to spend over $2.5 trillion on AI, a 47% increase from 2025, according to Fortune contributor David Rock. The surge has been powered in part by companies giving workers access to GenAI tools such as Co-Pilot, Gemini, or Claude.
Rock says that over the last year he asked hundreds of leaders whether their companies felt behind on AI adoption, and he found a nearly unanimous fear of falling behind competitors. That FOMO, he argues, drove spending and rollout decisions across organizations.
Now, Rock says, many firms are feeling an 'AI hangover' — a 'What have I just done?' moment after months of investment and attempted rollouts. He points to three symptoms: surprise at the intensity of pushback against AI, anxiety about how little business impact they can see, and concern that employees are doing worse work while feeling more overwhelmed.
The most common response, he writes, is to double down and push employees to use the tools even more. Rock calls that a 'terrible idea.' In his view, companies are treating GenAI like a technology rollout when it is closer to a complete overhaul of how people think.
Rock argues that GenAI should be positioned as a tool to improve thinking, not replace it. He says companies need to make AI adoption less threatening and make deep thinking easier if they want results.
He also warns that when companies encourage wide use, the biggest attention comes from poor and average performers, who then start using AI to summarize meetings, write emails, build presentations, draft marketing plans, and handle business problems. Their raw output rises, Rock says, but the quality of the work does not necessarily follow.
On the receiving end, he says, other employees are left with more material to process because their peers are producing faster. Some start using AI even more just to keep up. Others dismiss the output as nonsense or average ideas.
Rock says that unless GenAI is used to stretch thinking, its output is by definition average. He also says the biggest risk is not just hallucinations, but the loss of critical thinking skills and the atrophy of long-term skills over time.
The numbers come first. A $2.5 trillion spending plan is not a pilot project; it is a capital decision with real margins at stake. If leaders are already seeing pushback and weak business impact, then the market is asking a simple question: is this productivity, or just expensive bureaucracy with a digital wrapper?
For free enterprise, the lesson is sharper than the hype. Capital rewards clear rules and measurable returns, not FOMO. If AI is going to justify this scale of spending, firms will need results, discipline, and a workforce that thinks better — not merely faster.
