New A.Team Research: 85% of Tech Leaders Blame AI Innovation Delays on Talent Shortage

2025 State of AI Innovation Report from A.Team and Riviera Partners reveals insights from 250 senior product and engineering leaders on AI strategies separating leaders from laggards

NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As generative AI enters the "trough of disillusionment," new research from A.Team reveals a stark reality: While 96% of tech leaders plan to increase AI investments in 2025, only 36% have successfully deployed AI to production. However, some companies are breaking through—not through technological silver bullets, but through a fundamental shift in how they build teams.

A.Team and Riviera Partner's "2025 State of AI Innovation Report," based on a survey of 250 senior product and engineering leaders, found that organizations using "blended teams"—which integrate specialized freelance talent with a core team of full-time employees—are twice as likely to reach advanced stages of AI innovation. Among companies that have successfully deployed AI to production, 93% say building custom solutions delivers more value than off-the-shelf tools.

The research reveals this talent crisis is severe:

• 94% of tech leaders say talent constraints are their primary barrier to AI innovation
• 85% have had to pause or extend critical AI initiatives due to talent shortages
• 88% report difficulty bringing on talent through traditional hiring channels

However, organizations embracing blended teams report dramatic improvements:

• 99% saw increased innovation capability
• 98% improved project success rates
• 96% accelerated speed of delivery
• 91% report faster progress on AI initiatives compared to working with IT services firms

"The gap between AI ambition and achievement isn't a technology problem—it's an execution problem," said Raphael Ouzan, co-founder & CEO of A.Team. "CIOs don't struggle to find AI models—they struggle to integrate them into enterprise workflows, scale them across business units, and ensure they deliver measurable value. The challenge isn't just AI — it's combining the Machine Learning expertise with product and cloud, security and data infrastructure expertise that can deliver enterprise-grade quality and enterprise-wide adoption."

"The gap between AI ambition and achievement isn't primarily a technology problem — it's a question of approach," said Raphael Ouzan, Co-Founder & CEO of A.Team. "While most companies struggle to move from proof-of-concept to production, some are breaking through by onboarding specialized builders who've led AI deployments across multiple companies and understand how to assemble the components you need to get to value 10x faster."

The research also sheds light on where successful companies are investing. Rather than chasing the latest large language models, leaders are prioritizing foundational capabilities:

• 50% increasing investment in AI safety and monitoring tools
• 49% focusing on AI development platforms
• 41% prioritizing both AI model training infrastructure and data infrastructure

Notably, these investments are increasingly focused on revenue generation (46%) over cost reduction (30%)—suggesting growing confidence in AI's ability to drive business growth through new products and enhanced customer experiences.

In addition to investment priorities, the findings reveal a sobering reality about AI timelines. While 32% of leaders expect ROI from custom AI development in under six months, current achievement rates tell a different story — only 7-14% of organizations have seen any sort of ROI from their GenAI initiatives, depending on the area of focus. This gap between expectation and reality isn't surprising to experienced technical leaders. Production-grade AI requires more than just model development; it demands robust data infrastructure, monitoring systems, and deployment pipelines. Companies often underestimate the foundational work needed to move from successful pilots to reliable production systems.

The report provides an unprecedented look into how companies are navigating AI's "trough of disillusionment," including: which AI capabilities are delivering the fastest ROI, where tech leaders across 27 industries are placing their bets in 2025, the technical roles proving hardest to fill, and the specific approaches leading organizations are taking to move from perpetual prototypes to production-grade AI systems. The findings provide a clear roadmap for organizations looking to accelerate their AI initiatives while avoiding common pitfalls that have derailed many early AI adopters.

The complete "2025 State of AI Innovation Report" is available at https://www.a.team/lp/state-of-ai-innovation.

A.Team powers the world's most ambitious companies with elite tech talent and ready-to-deploy AI solutions. From single roles to managed project teams, we have helped over 500 organizations like Lyft, McGraw Hill, and Grindr build their future faster. Its AI-driven platform precision matches your initiatives with experts from a network of 11,000+ pre-vetted engineers, data scientists, product leaders, and more. Backed by $60M from Insight Partners and supported by Adam Grant and Jay-Z's Roc Nation, we're transforming how companies build what's next. For more information, visit a.team.

Riviera Partners is a global executive recruiting firm specializing in Technology, Engineering, Product and Design leadership. Riviera's exclusive focus on technology talent means we bring decades of collective domain experience, tens of thousands of executive relationships, and the accumulated data of hundreds of thousands of interactions with technology leaders to bear for our clients on every search. For more information, visit rivierapartners.com.

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SOURCE A.Team