Georgian + NewtonX · Applied AI Benchmarks · Wave 3

AI Leaders, Laggards and the Gap Between

A field study of how B2B software companies are turning AI ambition into operating reality — what separates the leaders, where the gaps are widening, and what it now takes to keep up.

  1. Chapter 1AI Is Eating Your StrategyAI has won the strategic agenda. The 2026 question — does the investment compound into advantage, or just pile up on the P&L?
  2. Chapter 2The Agentic Divide QuantifiedThe market split in two over agentic AI. Wave 3 measures the divide — and how fast it opened.
  3. Chapter 3What Makes a RunnerRunners run a different AI stack entirely — six measurable gaps that compound into real advantage.
  4. Chapter 4The Agent EngineerAI rewrote the R&D workflow in 18 months — what engineers do, how fast they ship, and what it costs.
  5. Chapter 5The GTM Efficiency GapAI is making GTM teams more productive — but customer ROI lags, and the gap traces to shallow data integration.
  6. Chapter 6AI Meet P&LAI spend is outrunning the budget models — rising cost meeting a stubborn ROI-measurement gap.
  7. Chapter 7The Governance GapDeployment is outpacing governance — manual guardrails, trailing security, and incidents at scale.
  8. Chapter 8The Human Side of the AI StackAI isn’t cutting jobs at scale yet — it’s reshaping them. Entry-level shrinks, AI hiring grows, everyone does more.
ReferenceThe Wave 3 benchmark referenceEvery measure behind the report — strategy, R&D, go-to-market, security and talent — with the survey question, base and data for each.