45% of Mid-Market Companies Have No Single Owner for How People and AI Work Together, Lever Talent Research Finds

Companies with a primary owner of the human-AI mix are 2.5x as likely to call AI extremely valuable, according to a survey of 484 mid-market leaders.

BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Lever Talent, Inc. today released The Co-Intelligent Workforce Report: 2026 Baseline, a survey of 484 Director-and-above leaders at US and Canadian companies with 100 to 999 employees. The report traces the gap between AI adoption and AI value to two decisions most companies have not made: who owns how people and AI work together, and how deliberately that relationship is designed.

"Every company is using AI," said Drew Fortin, Founder and CEO of Lever Talent. "The question that matters now is what happens after the chatbot, and whether anyone in the building is responsible for the answer. Most companies never decided what AI was for, who should own it, or how work should be divided among a workforce of people and AI."

The report's five lead findings:

• Nobody Owns the Mix: 45% of mid-market companies have no single owner for how people and AI work together, and only 21% have someone whose main job it is.
• The Adoption Illusion: 97% have adopted AI and 92% are still raising spend, but only 28% say AI is extremely valuable.
• The Orchestrator's Dividend: Companies with a primary owner of the human-AI mix are 2.5x as likely as everyone else to call AI extremely valuable, and 5.5x as likely as companies where no one owns it.
• The Tech-Only Dead End: Companies investing only in AI technology reach extreme value 6% of the time, while those investing across technology, programs, and people reach it 50% of the time, an 8.3x difference.
• Design Decides: Where the division of labor between people and AI is clear and someone owns catching AI's errors, companies are 5.7x as likely to report extreme value. Half of companies have not done this work.

The report introduces the Workforce Orchestrator™, the named leader accountable for how people and AI work together, and closes with specific actions for CEOs and heads of HR. Lever Talent will repeat the survey annually to measure which companies close these gaps.

The full report is available as a free download. Journalists can request the report, dataset, chart files, or interviews without registering by selecting "Press & Media Inquiries" on the Lever Talent Contact Us page or emailing [email protected].

Methodology
Lever Talent commissioned the research. Port Research designed the research strategy, and Researchscape designed and fielded the survey through a third-party online panel from August 17 to September 14, 2026. Findings describe associations, not cause and effect.

About Lever Talent
Lever Talent, Inc. helps companies align their technology, programs, and people to master their human-AI workforce transformation. Through workforce orchestration, software and agentic workflows, talent strategy consulting, fractional HR, and AI fluency programs, Lever Talent helps organizations decide who owns the human-AI mix and design how people and AI work together. Learn more at levertalent.com.

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SOURCE Lever Talent