"Your AI pilot showed 94% accuracy improvements. The LLM is yielding solid results. You're getting defunded anyway. The reason? You solved a problem AI can solve. Your budget-holder needed you to solve theirs. Companies launch AI pilots that produce results, then stall at scale. The team's diagnosis: "They don't get it." What's really going on: These projects never earned budget-holder buy-in."
"Passing the budget-holder test requires three things pilot teams fall short on: analytic proof that you move their needles, execution confidence that scale is achievable, and relational trust that you have their back. As economic headwinds hit 2026, here's how to know if your project will survive-and what to do about it now. Analytic Proof-Do You Move Their Needles? Budget-holders don't fund impressive technology. They fund solutions that move metrics they get credit for at bonus time."
AI pilots can deliver impressive accuracy and reliable LLM outputs yet still lose funding when they don't align with the budget-holder's priorities. Budget-holders allocate resources to solutions that visibly move the metrics that affect their compensation and performance evaluations. Successful scaling requires analytic proof that the pilot changes those specific metrics, clear execution plans and confidence that scale is achievable, and relational trust that the team will support the budget-holder through deployment and change management. Economic downturns increase scrutiny on innovation spend, so teams must prioritize metric alignment, operational scalability, and stakeholder relationships to survive.
Read at Fast Company
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