McKinsey report: CFOs and CIOs push generative AI financial sustainability

Business Jul 17, 2026

McKinsey's latest report says businesses are shifting gears with generative AI, moving from just experimenting to making it financially sustainable.

Now, leaders like CFOs and CIOs want AI systems that deliver real, measurable results without breaking the bank.

Agentic AI demands costly response tuning

Agentic AI comes with hefty costs: about 60% goes into improving how it responds.

High token usage and long-running tasks drive up bills fast, especially when advanced reasoning is used for simple jobs.

Things like prompt design, language formatting, and processing non-English languages also add to expenses, making smart cost management more important than ever.