Research from Lenovo reveals that 96% of retail sector AI deployments are meeting or exceeding expectations – outpacing other industries. While finance and healthcare are investing heavily, their results show mixed returns, highlighting sharp differences in how AI is being applied across sectors.

The CIO Playbook 2025, Lenovo’s study of EMEA IT leaders in partnership with IDC, uncovers sharply different attitudes, investment strategies, and outcomes across the Healthcare, Retail, and, Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI) industries.

Caution Pays Off for EMEA BFSI and Retail sectors

Of all the sectors analysed, BFSI stands out for its caution. Potentially reflecting the highly regulated nature of the industry, only 7% of organisations have adopted AI, and just 38% of AI budgets allocated to Generative AI (GenAI) in 2025 – the lowest across all sectors surveyed.

While the industry is taking a necessarily measured approach to innovation, the strategy appears to be paying dividends: BFSI companies reported the highest rate of AI projects exceeding expectations (33%), suggesting that when AI is deployed, it’s well-aligned with specific needs and workloads.

A similar pattern is visible in Retail, where 61% of organisations are still in the pilot phase. Despite below-average projected spending growth (97%), the sector reported a remarkable 96% of AI deployments to date either meeting or exceeding expectations, the highest combined satisfaction score among all industries surveyed.

Healthcare: Rapid Investment, Uneven Results

In contrast, the healthcare sector is moving quickly to catch up, planning a 169% increase in AI spending over 2025, the largest increase of any industry. But spend doesn’t directly translate to success. Healthcare currently has the lowest AI adoption rate and the highest proportion of organisations reporting that AI fell short of expectations.

This disconnect suggests that, while the industry is investing heavily, it may lack the internal expertise or strategy needed to implement AI effectively and may require stronger external support and guidance to ensure success.

One Technology, Many Journeys

“These findings confirm that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to AI,” said Simone Larsson, Head of Enterprise AI, Lenovo. “Whether businesses are looking to take a bold leap with AI, or a more measured step-by-step approach, every industry faces unique challenges and opportunities. Regardless of these factors, identification of business challenges and opportunity areas followed by the development of a robust plan provides a foundation on which to build a successful AI deployment.”

The CIO Playbook 2025 is designed to help IT leaders benchmark their progress and learn from peers across industries and geographies. The report provides actionable insights on AI strategy, infrastructure, and transformation priorities in 2025 and beyond. The full CIO Playbook 2025 report for EMEA can be downloaded here.

Europe and Middle East CIO Playbook 2025, It’s Time for AI-nomics features research from IDC, commissioned by Lenovo, which surveyed 620 IT decision-makers in nine markets, [Denmark, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Middle East, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom]. Fieldwork was conducted in November 2024.

Explore the full EMEA Lenovo AInomics Report here.

The company will use the new capital to hire more than 50 engineers to “push the frontier of agentic AI” and to expand Augie into more logistics workflows for shippers, brokers, carriers and distributors, according to a Sept. 4 press release.

Augie performs tasks in quoting, dispatch, tracking, appointment scheduling, document collection and billing, the release said. It understands the context of every shipment and acts across email, phone, TMS, portals and chat.

“Logistics runs on millions of decisions—under pressure, across fragmented systems and with too many tabs open,” Augment co-founder and CEO Harish Abbott said in the release. “Augie doesn’t just assist. It takes ownership.”

Augment launched out of stealth five months ago, and the Series A funding brings its total capital raised to $110 million, according to the release.

When announcing the company’s launch in a March 18 blog post, Abbott said Augie does all the tedious work so that staff can focus on more important tasks.

“What exactly does Augie do?” Abbott said in the post. “Augie can read/write documents, respond to emails, make calls and receive calls, log into systems, do data entry and document uploads.”

Augie is now used by dozens of third-party logistics providers and shippers and supports more than $35 billion in freight under management, per the Sept. 4 press release.

Customers have reported a 40% reduction in invoice delays, an eight-day acceleration in billing cycles, 5% or greater gross margin recovery per load and, across all customers, millions of dollars in track and trace payroll savings, the release said.

Jacob Effron, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, which led the funding round, said in the release that Augment is “creating the system of work the logistics industry has always needed.”

“Customers consistently highlight Augment’s speed, deeply collaborative approach and transformative impact on productivity,” Effron said.

In another development in the space, Authentica said Tuesday (Sept. 9) that it launched an AI platform designed to deliver real-time supply chain visibility and automate compliance.

In May, AI logistics software startup Pallet raised $27 million in a Series B funding round.

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