Akeneo Survey: AI Ambition is Outpacing the Commerce Foundations Needed to Deliver It

92% of U.S. organizations expect AI budgets to increase as data, integration, and governance demands put new pressure on IT teams

BOSTON, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Akeneo, the Product Experience (PX) leader, today released its Agentic Commerce Reality Check Report, revealing that as organizations race to operationalize AI, the product data, integrations, and governance underpinning commerce are becoming the real test of AI readiness.

According to Akeneo's survey of 1,000 senior IT decision makers across the U.S. and Europe, 95% of respondents globally are confident their organizations are ready for AI-driven commerce, and 87% expect AI budgets to increase over the next one to two years. The U.S. shows even stronger levels of confidence and investment, with 62% very confident in their readiness and 92% anticipating increased AI budgets. Behind that confidence, IT teams are confronting the work required to make AI reliable across complex commerce environments, from preparing and governing product information to connecting existing systems and scaling new AI-driven experiences.

The findings point to a new phase of AI adoption. The question is no longer whether organizations believe in AI, but whether their commerce foundations, particularly related to product information quality, technological integrations, and data governance standards, can keep pace as AI becomes embedded across the business.

AI is Exposing the Complexity Beneath Modern Commerce
AI has quickly moved from isolated experimentation into a core IT responsibility. Two-thirds (66%) of U.S. organizations say IT owns AI strategy, while 80% say IT participates in approving or governing AI initiatives. More than a third (35%) of U.S. senior IT decision makers say AI has fundamentally reshaped their day-to-day role, with another 41% taking on additional responsibilities.

For IT teams, scaling AI means making it work within the systems the business already relies on, from ERP, PIM, and DAM environments to supplier feeds, commerce platforms, and downstream channels. AI did not create fragmented data, manual workflows or brittle integrations, but it is making the cost of those existing challenges harder to ignore as more systems and agents depend on the same information. And new AI-driven and agentic experiences are not replacing existing commerce environments; they are adding another layer of complexity, and placing even greater demands on the product information those environments already depend on.

AI Readiness Comes With a Data Tax
Nearly half (44%) of U.S. organizations spend more than half of total AI project effort on data preparation. For commerce organizations, much of that work involves resolving missing attributes, inconsistent taxonomies, conflicting product information, and regional pricing or compliance requirements before AI can reliably use the information.

"U.S. IT leaders clearly aren't lacking confidence, ambition, or investment in AI. What they're confronting now is the work required to turn that confidence into something scalable," said Romain Fouache, CEO of Akeneo. "Every new AI use case depends on the quality of the information beneath it. If organizations are repeatedly cleaning, reconciling, and restructuring the same data for every initiative, they're not building a scalable AI capability. They're rebuilding the foundation every time. Product information has always been fundamental to commerce. What AI changes is the scale, speed, and number of systems that depend on it, making trusted, governed product data more important than ever to compete and win."

AI is Creating a New Discovery Layer 
That pressure is becoming particularly clear as U.S. organizations prepare for AI-powered product discovery. Nearly half (48%) are actively investing in generative engine optimization (GEO), the highest level among the markets surveyed, with 59% of U.S. IT decision makers saying they are very familiar with GEO. But GEO is only one response to a broader shift in how products are discovered and considered, as AI assistants increasingly interpret intent, compare options, and influence purchase decisions.

Moving quickly does not guarantee visibility. 29% of U.S. organizations cite limited skills or understanding as a barrier to scaling GEO, while 27% point to a lack of cross-functional alignment. As this new discovery layer takes shape, incomplete or inconsistent product information becomes the sole deciding factor behind whether a product enters the consideration set at all.

As investment in AI continues to grow, organizations that build a reusable foundation of trusted information, resilient integrations, and operational governance will be better positioned to scale without recreating the same work for every new use case. The findings underscore that the next phase of AI readiness will depend less on adding more tools and more on strengthening the trusted product data, integrations, and governance that commerce already depends on, so that the same foundation can reliably support people, channels, and increasingly, AI agents.

To see the full results of the survey, please visit: The Agentic Commerce Reality Check: 10 Hard Truths from IT Leaders on What's Really Holding AI Back. To learn more about Akeneo, please visit www.Akeneo.com.

About Akeneo
Akeneo is the Product Experience (PX) company and global leader in agentic-first Product Cloud solutions, providing the foundational operating system for the AI-powered commerce era.

With its Product Cloud, Akeneo enables brands, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to centralize, govern, and orchestrate their product information, transforming fragmented data into trusted, actionable assets. With the integration of PricingHUB, Akeneo extends its platform beyond product data to unify product data and pricing — the two signals that drive discovery, conversion, and business performance. Together, Akeneo helps organizations move from managing product information to making better business decisions, aligning what they sell and how they sell it to compete and win in a rapidly evolving, AI-driven market.

Leading global brands, including Chico's, TaylorMade Golf, Rail Europe, and more, trust Akeneo to scale their commerce initiatives and deliver consistent, high-performing product experiences. For more information: https://www.akeneo.com

Media Contact:
Allison Knight
PAN for Akeneo
[email protected] 

SOURCE Akeneo