AI Ambitions at Risk: 72% of IT Leaders Say Poor Infrastructure Is Stalling AI Growth

Confluent's 2026 Data Streaming Report finds the biggest barrier to AI growth isn't investment, but the infrastructure needed to support it

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nearly three-quarters (72%) of global IT leaders say a lack of real-time data infrastructure is stalling their efforts to scale AI, according to a new 2026 Data Streaming Report from Confluent.

The report, which surveyed 4,625 IT leaders worldwide, examines the challenges that enterprises are facing when scaling AI, and why they may need to focus more on fixing the infrastructure AI initiatives rely on rather than simply increasing investment in AI itself.

According to the research, 72% of IT leaders have encountered at least three challenges when scaling AI initiatives. Among the most common are insufficient infrastructure for real-time data processing (72%), uncertainty around data lineage, timeliness and quality (66%), and fragmented ownership of data (65%).

These infrastructure challenges are also slowing the deployment of agentic AI. Two-thirds (66%) of IT leaders cite data infrastructure and data quality issues as barriers to agentic adoption, and only 32% report having agentic AI in production, with the majority experiencing delays.

Unlocking AI in real time

As organisations look to move AI from pilot projects into production, attention is increasingly turning to the data that powers it. Four in five (80%) IT leaders say using enterprise data to drive AI-based systems is a top business priority, highlighting the growing importance of real-time access to trusted information.

The findings suggest many organisations see data streaming as a key part of the solution.

Nearly nine in 10 (88%) say data streaming platforms help unblock agentic AI progress by making data more trustworthy, contextualised and discoverable. Meanwhile, 94% say data streaming increases or is expected to increase the impact of their AI investments, and 90% say it helps ease the path to AI adoption.

Data streaming investment overtakes AI

The report also finds that as AI investments increase, investments into data streaming also increase, with 88% of IT leaders ranking data streaming as a key priority, alongside 82% citing AI and machine learning technologies. The findings suggest IT leaders increasingly recognise that maximising the value of AI depends on access to trusted, real-time data. As organisations move AI initiatives into production, attention is shifting from models alone to the infrastructure needed to deliver the right data at the right time.

Commenting on the findings, Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent, said: “Most organisations do not have an AI investment problem, they have a data problem. AI systems depend on fresh, accurate and contextual information, but too many are still being built on fragmented data, batch processes, and infrastructure that was not designed for continuous intelligence.

“As organisations move beyond experimentation and start deploying AI across critical business processes, those gaps become harder to ignore. Models need to be connected to the systems, events and signals that reflect what is happening across the business. The companies making the most progress are investing not only in AI itself, but in the data foundations needed to support it. Those foundations will determine which organisations can turn AI investment into business value at scale.”

Download the full 2026 Data Streaming Report here.

About Confluent

Confluent, an IBM company, is the data streaming platform that is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure that sets data in motion. Confluent’s cloud-native offering is the foundational platform for data in motion—designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data from multiple sources to constantly stream across an organization. With Confluent, organizations can meet the new business imperative of delivering rich, digital frontend customer experiences and transitioning to sophisticated, real-time, software-driven backend operations. To learn more, visit www.confluent.io.

Methodology

For the fifth installment of our annual Data Streaming Report, we teamed up with Freeform Dynamics and Radma Research to gather responses from 4,625 IT leaders who are familiar with data streaming and whose experience with the technology ranges from little to significant. Survey respondents hold various strategic and leadership positions. They include those in C-suite roles, directors, vice presidents, managers, senior contributors, and senior consultants in companies with 500 or more employees. The pool of respondents spans 14 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand.