UK finance chiefs are warming to AI, even as they keep spending in check

Nearly three-quarters of the finance chiefs at Britain’s largest companies now say they are optimistic that artificial intelligence will improve business performance, a striking figure from a group not given to exuberance.

In Deloitte’s latest quarterly UK CFO Survey, 73% expressed that optimism, up from 59% at the end of 2025 and just 39% two years earlier.

The rise arrives as the corporate case for AI is being audited rather than assumed. McKinsey’s recent conclusion that the productivity payoff is real but conditional captures the mood among finance leaders, who tend to be the people eventually asked to show where the money went.

Deloitte polled 58 CFOs between 1 and 13 July, most of them from FTSE-listed or large private companies. Their warming view of AI sits inside a broader thaw in the anxieties that have shadowed the survey for two years, though the thaw is uneven.

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Concern about geopolitical risk fell to 68 on the survey’s 0-to-100 scale, down from 79 at the start of 2026.

Worry about energy prices and supply disruption eased to 60 from 70 in the first quarter, a retreat that tracked the calming of tensions in the Middle East over the summer.

The shift stands out because business confidence itself had sunk to a six-year low earlier in 2026, weighed down by geopolitics and doubts about the UK’s growth prospects.

Against that backdrop, the steady climb in AI sentiment is one of the few lines on the survey moving decisively upward, and it has now doubled in two years while most other measures have gone sideways or fallen.

The optimism still carries caveats, and CFOs were careful to draw them. Concern about UK competitiveness and domestic productivity barely shifted, holding around 63, and research showing that the time AI frees up is often quietly wasted helps explain why belief and measurable return remain separate columns on the ledger.

Debapratim De, who became Deloitte UK’s chief economist in June, framed the numbers as continuity rather than a pivot.

“CFOs continue to prioritise cost reduction and cash control in this environment,” he said, a line that has held across several quarters of the survey.