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Where should CIOs invest next? IT leaders weigh in
Six CIOs share where they would invest if their IT budgets increased. AI leads, with data, infrastructure and security investments helping to scale it.
Executive summary
- AI is the top investment priority for CIOs considering a hypothetical 10% increase in IT budgets.
- Scaling AI requires more than new tools, with CIOs pointing to data, infrastructure, security, governance and business processes as key investments.
- CIOs are focused on business results, including efficiency, employee and customer experiences, and measurable returns from AI.
A big part of the CIO role is knowing where to put the company's money, especially as IT leaders face pressure to show a return on every investment.
To find the areas getting the most attention right now, TechTarget asked six CIOs from different industries where they would invest first if their IT budgets increased 10%. AI emerged as the clear priority, but their answers show that investment in AI goes beyond buying new tools. CIOs need to invest in the infrastructure, data, security and business processes required to scale AI and deliver lasting value.
Here's what they had to say.
If your IT budget increased 10%, where would you invest first?
I'd double down on the AI infrastructure monitoring, ROI and security piece. This space is evolving quickly, and I'm seeing some really cool, innovative technology showing up on the AI infrastructure side -- the Anthropics, OpenAIs, Googles and Metas. They're creating all this opportunity in their ecosystems around building out these solutions to continue to better manage them. If you can get AI right at scale, those are the companies that are going to win in the future.
-- Eric Johnson, CIO, PagerDuty
I'd invest in scaling AI from successful pilots into enterprise capabilities that measurably improve student and employee experiences. The tech itself is becoming increasingly accessible. The greater challenge is integrating AI into business processes, data, governance and change management in ways that produce sustainable outcomes.
A meaningful portion of that budget would also go toward strengthening the underlying foundation that makes AI successful. That includes modern data platforms, identity, security, integration and the operational capabilities required to safely deploy AI at scale. Organizations that focus only on buying more AI tools often discover that the real bottleneck is everything surrounding those tools.
-- Chris Campbell, CIO, DeVry University
The same place I'm investing in right now. Agentic AI certainly comes with risks, but I'm a firm believer in AI as an augmentation rather than as a replacement. For every company where we put agentic AI in place, the company has seen massive efficiency gains of 40, 50, 60 -- up to 80% -- because a lot of that back-end work is done for them.
But what's more magical is that for every one point that they see in customer satisfaction or net promoter score improvement, they see an employee satisfaction rate double that. So, the employees are happier, because why wouldn't they be? They're getting screamed at less by customers.
Only 3% of companies have successfully transformed as a result of AI -- and I know these stats because I just gave the speech at Google . But if you look at the performance of those companies that have versus the companies that have not, they're night and day. They just race forward like you've never seen.
-- Doug Gilbert, CIO and chief digital officer, Sutherland
If I got 10%, I'd invest it in some more innovation and R&D on the AI front, because I would get greater leveraging impact from that investment versus making an investment in new hardware or software. I'm looking for a leveraging impact.
-- Joe Locandro, CIO, Rimini Street
I'd invest even more in the AI layer that sits between our claims platforms and our adjusters. That's where we see the biggest opportunity -- to remove administrative work like intake, triage and first notice of loss documentation. This would allow our experts to spend more time on the judgment calls that actually improve claim outcomes.
We've built our technology strategy around augmenting our people. As AI capabilities continue to evolve, the next investment is making sure our agentic AI solutions have fast, secure access to real-time information without creating performance bottlenecks. Every minute we remove from the claims process helps us deliver better experiences for claimants while reducing loss costs for the clients we serve.
A close second would be cybersecurity. Sedgwick manages one of the largest claims data sets in the world, so every advancement we make in AI must be matched by equally strong investments in security architecture, governance and data protection. As AI becomes more embedded in enterprise systems, maintaining trust becomes just as important as driving innovation.
-- Sean Safieh, CIO of global platforms and digital solutions, Sedgwick
I wouldn't recommend buying more technology. I'd invest it in continuing to scale AI use cases from experimentation to enterprise value. The winning formula is high-quality data, modernized processes, and teams focused on business outcomes, not just technology deployment.
-- Steve Bronson, CIO, Southern Glazer's Beverage Co.
Tim Murphy is a site editor and writer for the IT Strategy team at TechTarget.
