Many large companies have a new Chief AI Officer—and it’s the CEO. Nearly three quarters of CEOs say that they are their organization’s main decision maker on AI, twice the share as last year.

CEOs are recognizing that AI is more than a technology. It opens the door to a fundamentally different way of running organizations—touching strategy, operations, culture, risk, and talent. In close coordination with their executive team, the CEO is the executive with the authority and perspective to connect those organizational and management dots.

With so many CEOs taking ownership of the success of their AI initiatives, AI is poised for a consequential year in 2026. So consequential, in fact, that half of CEOs…