{"id":3744498,"date":"2026-05-19T11:26:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T15:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/?p=3744498"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:26:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T15:26:57","slug":"the-real-reason-companies-are-struggling-to-scale-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/artificial-intelligence-2\/2026\/the-real-reason-companies-are-struggling-to-scale-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Companies Are Struggling to Scale AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every company says AI is a priority. Budgets are going up. Executive buy-in is strong. So why does scaling feel so hard for so many organizations?<\/p><div\r\n\tid=\"article-paywall-overlay\"\r\n\tclass=\"d-none\"\r\n>\r\n\t<div id=\"article-paywall-content\" class=\"my-4\">\r\n\t\t\n<div class=\"wpcf7 no-js\" id=\"wpcf7-f2699550-o1\" lang=\"en-US\" dir=\"ltr\" data-wpcf7-id=\"2699550\">\n<div class=\"screen-reader-response\"><p role=\"status\" aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\"><\/p> <ul><\/ul><\/div>\n<form action=\"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744498#wpcf7-f2699550-o1\" method=\"post\" class=\"wpcf7-form init pymnts-article-paywall-form\" aria-label=\"Contact form\" novalidate=\"novalidate\" data-status=\"init\">\n<fieldset class=\"hidden-fields-container\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7\" value=\"2699550\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_version\" value=\"6.1.5\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_locale\" value=\"en_US\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_unit_tag\" value=\"wpcf7-f2699550-o1\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_container_post\" value=\"0\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_posted_data_hash\" value=\"\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"_wpcf7_recaptcha_response\" value=\"\" \/>\n<\/fieldset>\n<div class=\"free-articles-prompt-intro\">\n\t<h2 class=\"mb-2\">Get the Full Story\n\t<\/h2>\n\t<p class=\"mb-4\">Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content \u2014 no additional logins required.\n\t<\/p>\n\t<div id='registrationContainer' class='container px-0'>\n\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"firstName\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required form-control border-secondary\" id=\"firstName\" aria-required=\"true\" aria-invalid=\"false\" placeholder=\"First Name*\" value=\"\" type=\"text\" name=\"firstName\" \/><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"lastName\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required form-control border-secondary\" id=\"lastName\" aria-required=\"true\" aria-invalid=\"false\" placeholder=\"Last Name*\" value=\"\" type=\"text\" name=\"lastName\" \/><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"YourTitle\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required form-control border-secondary\" id=\"inputTitle\" aria-required=\"true\" aria-invalid=\"false\" placeholder=\"Title*\" value=\"\" type=\"text\" name=\"YourTitle\" \/><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"YourCompany\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required form-control border-secondary\" id=\"inputCompany\" aria-required=\"true\" aria-invalid=\"false\" placeholder=\"Company*\" value=\"\" type=\"text\" name=\"YourCompany\" \/><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"YourEmail\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-email wpcf7-validates-as-required wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-email form-control border-secondary\" id=\"inputEmail\" aria-required=\"true\" aria-invalid=\"false\" placeholder=\"Email*\" value=\"\" type=\"email\" name=\"YourEmail\" \/><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\t<p><span class=\"wpcf7-form-control-wrap\" data-name=\"YourCountry\"><input size=\"40\" maxlength=\"400\" class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text wpcf7-validates-as-required form-control border-secondary\" id=\"inputCountry\" 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completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our <a class=\"fw-bold\" href=\"https:\/\/pymnts-com-develop.go-vip.net\/privacy-policy\/\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a class=\"fw-bold\" href=\"https:\/\/pymnts-com-develop.go-vip.net\/terms-conditions\/\">Terms and Conditions<\/a>.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<p><input id='hiddenPath' type='hidden' name='path' value='' \/><input type='hidden' name='userDeviceId' id='userDeviceId' \/><input type='hidden' name='pageTitle' id='pageTitle' \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-12\">\n\t\t\t\t<div id='formButtonRow' class='container mt-1 px-0'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<p><input class=\"wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-submit has-spinner btn btn-dark text-uppercase py-2 px-5 small\" id=\"theSubmitButton\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Submit\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"post_id\" value=\"3744498\" \/><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"source\" value=\"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/artificial-intelligence-2\/2026\/the-real-reason-companies-are-struggling-to-scale-ai\/\" \/><p style=\"display: none !important;\" class=\"akismet-fields-container\" data-prefix=\"_wpcf7_ak_\"><label>&#916;<textarea name=\"_wpcf7_ak_hp_textarea\" cols=\"45\" rows=\"8\" maxlength=\"100\"><\/textarea><\/label><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"ak_js_1\" name=\"_wpcf7_ak_js\" value=\"99\"\/><script>document.getElementById( \"ak_js_1\" ).setAttribute( \"value\", ( new Date() ).getTime() );<\/script><\/p><div class=\"wpcf7-response-output\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div id=\"article-paywall-hidden-content\">\r\n\t\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because the barrier to artificial intelligence isn\u2019t the technology. It\u2019s the operational infrastructure underneath it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New research from PYMNTS Intelligence shows that financial services, healthcare and media and advertising companies face very different obstacles to deploying AI at scale. And while ambition is shared across all three sectors, what\u2019s blocking progress is unique to each one.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>What the Data Shows<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AI budget growth is real across the board. Eighty-five percent of financial services and insurance firms plan to increase AI spending over the next 12 months. Media and advertising companies are close behind at 80%. Healthcare trails at 60%, though for reasons the data quickly explains.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3745563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AI-investment-chart.png\" alt=\"chart, AI investment\" width=\"900\" height=\"509\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reasons behind that spending reveal just as much. Financial services firms tie their investment to productivity gains and competitive positioning, both at 65%. Healthcare, by contrast, leans heavily on pilot funding with no formal ROI requirements, cited by 60% of firms. That\u2019s not a sign of lower commitment. It\u2019s a sign of an industry still figuring out where artificial intelligence fits in clinical and operational workflows. Media and advertising points to executive-driven strategic alignment, at 50%, but only 25% of firms in that sector can point to hard financial metrics to justify the spend.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The barriers follow a similar pattern. Financial services firms are held back mainly by data quality problems, cited by 30% as the single biggest obstacle. Clean, standardized data is the foundation for nearly every AI use case in that sector, and too much of it still isn\u2019t there. Healthcare faces two equally serious problems at the same time: system integration and data quality are each cited by 30% of firms. That double constraint is what makes AI so difficult to scale in clinical environments, where patient data lives in dozens of disconnected systems. Media and advertising has no single dominant barrier. Instead, organizational problems spread across skills gaps, governance and leadership alignment are each cited at 15% to 20%.<\/p><div id=\"pymnt-1413805610\" class=\"pymnt-content pymnt-entity-placement\" style=\"margin-top: 50px;\"><p style=\"text-align:center\">Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p><script async type=\"text\/javascript\" id=\"dianomi_context_script\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dianomi.com\/js\/contextfeed.js\"><\/script> \r\n<div class=\"dianomi_context\" data-dianomi-context-id=\"4329\"><\/div><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>3 Key Findings<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Financial services has the most mature AI infrastructure of the three sectors, but data quality is the ceiling. The systems are largely in place. The inputs aren\u2019t reliable enough yet to support broader use cases.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Healthcare\u2019s challenge is structural, not philosophical. Clinical data exists in abundance. The problem is that it is fragmented across systems that don\u2019t talk to each other. AI cannot do much when it can\u2019t reliably access consistent data.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Media and advertising needs organizational alignment before it can scale anything. Governance, talent and leadership issues must be resolved together. Fixing one without the others doesn\u2019t move the needle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>What This Means for Banking, FinTech and Digital Economy Leaders<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For banks and FinTech firms, the data is both encouraging and instructive. Financial services leads in deployment depth and budget commitment. But productivity gains will plateau if data quality problems aren&#8217;t addressed directly. That means investing not just in AI tools, but in the data pipelines, governance standards and infrastructure that feed them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For FinTechs building products for healthcare clients, the integration constraint is a market opening. Solutions that connect fragmented clinical and operational systems are in direct demand.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Bottom Line<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Across all three sectors, more than 80% of leaders say artificial intelligence will augment human decision-making over the next five years, not replace it. The goal is widely shared. The path to it is not. What separates AI leaders from laggards isn\u2019t budget or ambition. It\u2019s whether the operational foundation exists to support the tools they\u2019re buying.<\/p>\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>\r\n\twindow.pymntsAllowedArticleCount = 1;\r\n\twindow.pymntsPostID = 3744498;\r\n<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every company says AI is a priority. Budgets are going up. Executive buy-in is strong. So why does scaling feel so hard for so many organizations? Get the Full Story Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content \u2014 no additional logins required. yesSubscribe to our daily [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3745581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","pymnts_footnotes":""},"categories":[65579],"tags":[9498,9680,65045,6957,3723,9206,67601,133069,4088],"class_list":["post-3744498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence-2","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data-brief","tag-financial-services","tag-healthcare","tag-news","tag-pymnts-intelligence","tag-pymnts-news","tag-technology"],"acf":{"suggested_titles":""},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.2 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Real Reason Companies Are Struggling to Scale AI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Companies are racing to deploy AI, but facing challenges that vary across sectors, with healthcare firms facing the biggest hurdles.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/artificial-intelligence-2\/2026\/the-real-reason-companies-are-struggling-to-scale-ai\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Real Reason Companies Are Struggling to Scale AI | PYMNTS.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every company says AI is a priority. 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