PwC has said that the adoption of artificial intelligence in 2025 will become accelerated as businesses realise its ability to future-proof their operations.
This was disclosed in its 2025 AI Business Predictions published on Wednesday.
According to the prediction, PwC said a company’s AI success will be as much about vision as adoption.
“That means that your AI choices may be the most crucial decisions not just this year but of your career. It’s now clear that AI can deliver value at scale—and we’re just getting started. Nearly half (49 per cent) of technology leaders in PwC’s October 2024 Pulse Survey said that AI was “fully integrated” into their companies’ core business strategy. A third said AI was fully integrated into products and services. Making AI intrinsic to the organisation is vital because making “big leaps” (such as new business models) is only one source of game-changing AI value. The other is the cumulative result of incremental value at scale: 20% to 30% gains in productivity, speed to market, and revenue, first in one area, then another—until the company is transformed,” part of the report read.
According to the report, the PwC US and Global Commercial Technology & Innovation Officer, Matt Wood, said, “AI adoption is progressing at a rapid clip across PwC and in clients in every sector. 2025 will bring significant advancements in quality, accuracy, capability, and automation that will continue to compound on each other, accelerating toward a period of exponential growth.”
The PwC Workforce Transformation Practice Leader, Anthony Abbatiello, added that “AI agents are set to revolutionise the workforce, blending human creativity with machine efficiency to unlock unprecedented levels of productivity and innovation.”
Abbatiello’s assertion counters fears that the adoption of AI would lead to job losses. The report indicated that rather than shrink the workforce, employers were going to welcome a host of new members to the team this year: digital workers known as AI agents.
“They could easily double your knowledge workforce and those in roles like sales and field support, transforming your speed to market, customer interactions, product design, and so on,” the report highlighted.
It was also revealed that through the adoption of AI, product development lifecycles can be reduced by half.
The prediction estimated that most companies are unprepared for the revolution in physical product design.
“AI is ready to deliver—but the skills gap is often a hurdle. Engineers with deep expertise in design and manufacturing often lack even foundational data science skills. Upskilling these teams and recruiting AI-savvy talent must begin now. Those who embrace AI’s potential in product development will enjoy faster speed to market, lower costs, and increased personalisation—and that can add up to more satisfied end users,” it was revealed.
“We’re just starting to feel the impact of how the multimodal vision and generation capabilities of AI will change product design and more,” PwC, US and Global Chief AI Engineering Officer, Scott Likens, said.
