Georgian Partners Launches Wave 2 AI, Applied Benchmark Research Report with 11-Partner Global Consortium

The report finds the absence of technical talent overcame cost as the top barrier to scaling AI initiatives

TORONTO, June 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ - Georgian Partners, a growth-stage B2B investor helping companies scale via its AI Lab, today launched its June 2025 Wave 2 AI, Applied Benchmark Research. The report, launched in partnership with B2B research firm NewtonX, engaged 612 executives from B2B companies to determine the current state of AI in business and its impact on performance. New for Wave 2, Georgian's AI Lab has partnered with 9 global organizations in an effort to broaden the scope of the report to drive more objective discussions about AI adoption using quantified benchmarks for B2B growth stage and enterprise companies around the world. The full report can be downloaded here.

The organizations participating in Georgian Partners' global consortium include: AI Marketers Guild, FirstMark, GTM Partners, and Untapped Ventures (San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles); Vector Institute and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Toronto, Edmonton); and Startup Nation Central, Herzog and Grove Ventures (Tel Aviv). The partners are working to distribute the survey within their communities to gather benchmarks relative to the rest of the world. Throughout the rest of 2025, Georgian Partners, together with the global consortium, will host in-person events in San Francisco, New York, London, Toronto, Montreal, Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi. These events will feature technical discussions and workshops on the current state of AI maturity in B2B companies.

"We believe conversations about AI's impact on business around the world will benefit from objective, high-quality, and quantified research benchmarks," comments James Lamberti, Head of Go-to-Market at Georgian Partners. "The global consortium assembled for our Wave 2 AI, Applied Benchmarks research consists of AI-focused venture and research firms in their respective markets. This group intends to help businesses chart a course with benchmarking to peers and resulting best practices sourced from their networks of global experts and researchers."

Key insights from Georgian Partners' Wave 2 AI, Applied Benchmarks highlight:

• Vibe Coding a Top 3 R&D Use Case in Production. Automated coding and debugging (aka Vibe Coding) is now the #3 overall use case with 37% of R&D Respondents reporting it in production. A further 40% of R&D Respondents are piloting an automated coding use case.
• Technical Talent the #1 Barrier in R&D. Absence of technical talent has now replaced high cost as the #1 barrier to scaling AI initiatives in R&D. Challenges obtaining technical talent increased 5 pts, rising to 45% in June 2025 versus November 2024 while Costs fell to #2 on the list at 43%.
• LLM penetration increased significantly in the past 6 months. OpenAI models continue to dominate the market and increased its use in production systems +10 pts between November 2024 and June 2025 to 85%. Google Gemini (+17 pts) and Anthropic Claude (+14 pts) also saw significant usage gains and closed the gap versus OpenAI modestly in a short period of time. OpenAI's 01-mini enters the market at 35% while DeepSeek remains at 18% as reasoning models have entered the market in the last 6 months.
• Internal Productivity Gains (26%) and the Creation of Competitive Advantage (20%) remain the top motivators for AI initiatives in the B2B world. Cost Savings and Revenue are a distant 3rd and 4th at 11% each.
• Thirdparty software providers are rapidly deploying AI features in support of Go-to-market teams. Production level use of AI gains for GTM teams is driven by a +14 pt increase in Advanced AI feature availability in third party GTM software, now up to 36% overall.
• B2B companies are slowly advancing in their AI maturity but face challenges moving to the highest maturity levels. Using our proprietary Crawl, Walk, Run AI maturity segmentation, we see modest maturity gains in the market with a nine point shift from Walkers (40% of market) to Joggers (30% of market). Runners and Crawlers remain unchanged at 11% and 18% respectively wave over wave.

"As AI technology accelerates at an unprecedented pace, B2B companies face the constant challenge of truly understanding its real-world adoption and impact," says Leon Mishkis, Chief Operating Officer at NewtonX. "The AI, Applied Benchmark Research report, now in its Wave 2 with Georgian Partners, quantifies how companies are actually leveraging tech as it advances, offering crucial, longitudinal data to understand what's next. This ongoing research will be vital in making predictions about where the industry is headed and which technologies and use cases are set to make the biggest impacts."

Additional details will follow including confirmed dates and venues for the AI, Applied global roadshow, those interested in attending can stay tuned here. Georgian Partners  plans to release Wave 3 of AI, Applied, which will continue to provide longitudinal analysis of benchmarks established in Waves 1 and 2,  in Q1 2026. Georgian Partners also intends to publish additional benchmarks highlighting the progress of specific markets relative to the rest of the world alongside the global consortium; further reports will be available here.

About Georgian Partners

Georgian Partners invests in high-growth B2B software companies and builds software to help those companies scale through our AI Lab. We seek to identify and accelerate leading growth-stage software companies in our thesis areas of Applied AI and Trust. Georgian's AI Lab team works with portfolio companies to address growth-stage product and go-to-market challenges. The AI Lab supports companies across the product development lifecycle through one-on-one engagements, the Transferred Learnings community and AI research. Based in Toronto, Georgian's team brings together investors with machine learning professionals, software entrepreneurs and experienced operators.

NewtonX Research Methodology

This study was conducted by Georgian in collaboration with NewtonX, a leading B2B research company. NewtonX employed a robust research methodology, involving 612 B2B executives globally. The study ensured a balanced perspective with equal representation from research and development (R&D) leaders and go-to-market (GTM) strategists. Participants were drawn from businesses with annual recurring revenues (ARR) starting at $1 Million, but ranging up to cover 200 large global Enterprises as well.

This global study included respondents from ten countries and spanned across 15 different verticals with a stated focus on AI as a strategic priority currently. Conducted as a blind study through 15-minute online interviews collected in April and May of 2025, the research adhered to rigorous qualification and quality assurance processes. This approach aims to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the findings, providing a comprehensive overview of AI benchmarks within the B2B sector.

SOURCE Georgian Partners Growth LP