airfocus by Lucid Research Reveals AI Is Shifting Software's Biggest Bottleneck from Engineering to Product Alignment

New survey data shows product teams are rapidly adopting AI, but many still struggle with trust, prioritization, and decision-making

HAMBURG, Germany, June 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- New research from airfocus by Lucid reveals a growing "AI maturity gap" among product organizations as artificial intelligence rapidly changes how software is built. While AI has dramatically accelerated coding and software execution, many teams still struggle to operationalize AI effectively when making strategic product decisions.

According to the research, only 4% of product teams report not using AI today, signaling near-universal adoption across the industry. However, widespread usage has not translated into widespread confidence. Nearly half of product teams (48%) say they still struggle to separate signal from noise, even as AI becomes increasingly embedded across analytics, research, and feedback workflows.

The findings point to a larger shift taking place across software development. As AI accelerates coding and execution, the primary bottleneck is moving upstream toward prioritization, alignment, and strategic judgment. Bain's 2025 research found that writing and testing code now accounts for only 25–35% of the idea-to-launch journey, leaving the remaining 65–75% centered on discovery, alignment, prioritization, and decision-making.

"The story isn't that product teams are slow to adopt AI. They've already adopted it. The story is that 48% of them can't trust what comes out the other side, because the AI is working from fragmented context. The next round of competitive advantage won't go to the teams with the most AI tools. It goes to the teams whose AI is grounded in one connected source of product truth," said Malte Scholz, co-founder of airfocus.

Barriers to scaling AI remain rooted in trust and data quality. Forty percent of product leaders cite lack of trust in AI outputs as a top blocker, followed by concerns around security (39%) and data quality (32%). The findings reinforce the need for AI systems grounded in structured, connected product data rather than fragmented workflows and disconnected sources of information.

As organizations continue integrating AI into product development, the research suggests the next competitive advantage will come not from adopting AI faster, but from helping teams make more aligned, confident decisions with it.

airfocus helps product organizations solve this challenge by connecting customer feedback, strategic priorities, roadmaps, and business objectives into a unified system for decision-making. By grounding AI in structured product context, teams can reduce noise, improve alignment, and make faster, more confident decisions about what to build and why it matters.

Learn more about the research here.

About airfocus by Lucid

airfocus by Lucid is the product intelligence platform for multi-team product organizations. The Product OS where sharper decisions get made, strategy stays aligned, and every team member, agent, and AI tool in the stack works from real product context and insights. The platform unifies feedback, strategy, OKRs, roadmaps, and delivery in one connected data model, with AI agents that triage feedback, draft stakeholder updates, and keep portfolio data clean. Bidirectional MCP makes that context available to Claude, Copilot, and every AI tool already in your stack. Acquired by Lucid Software in 2025, airfocus serves product organizations globally.

SOURCE airfocus by Lucid