Analysis of real buyer and operator conversations shows 88% of teams claim AI adoption, but only 24% have embedded it into revenue workflows
Momentum, a leader in AI revenue orchestration, released its newest 2026 Voice of the Market report, a build-on analysis of buyer and operator conversations across active B2B enterprise opportunities. The report, drawing on more than 2,000 active B2B sales opportunities across 150 industries, revealed that most AI use remains ad hoc and disconnected from core enterprise workflows.
“Most teams say they’re using AI, but in practice, that often means queuing a prompt or two outside their core systems,” said Santiago Suarez Ordoñez, co-founder and CEO of Momentum. “Real adoption starts when AI operates inside revenue processes and updates systems of record automatically. As stacks hit saturation, buyers are moving away from adding more point solutions. They want consolidation and integrations that reduce complexity, because that is what determines whether AI scales or stalls.”
In the 2025 Voice of the Market and AI Maturity report, measuring over 1,000 sales conversations from January to July of 2025, Momentum identified a growing mismatch between the AI narrative in the market and the realities revenue teams face day to day. The analysis showed the enterprise technology market operating in two parallel realities: the aspirational narrative of AI-powered transformation promoted by vendors and analysts, and the operational reality of organizations drowning in manual processes, integration failures, and tool proliferation.
The 2026 report, going over the entire year and analyzing the difference between the first half and second half, reinforces that this gap has still not closed. Instead, it has hardened into a measurable adoption divide. Where most teams describe AI use in one-off, assistive terms, a much smaller group has AI running inside core revenue workflows and writing validated data back to the CRM.
Key Findings from the 2026 Voice of the Market report include:
- The Adoption Gap – 88% of teams say they use AI, but only 24% have it working inside revenue workflows. For most teams, AI lives outside the system of record rather than automating validated updates into the CRM.
- The 4-Tool Threshold – Once organizations reach four or more tools, evaluation of tool efficiency slows, and consolidation becomes the priority. Teams are 73% less likely to evaluate new solutions once stacks are saturated, and integration beats features 57% of the time.
- The H2 Split – In H1 2025, 92% of companies couldn’t articulate AI needs because they were buried in manual processes. By H2, AI became a sorting mechanism. Now, teams with clean operations are able to systematize AI across workflows, while teams with messy CRM and data foundations stall and revert to manual workarounds like spreadsheets.
“Most AI ‘adoption’ is performative and surface-level. Tool sprawl is simply the symptom,” said Jonathan Kvarfordt, VP of GTM Strategy and Marketing at Momentum. “We keep hearing how people throw AI tools and seats at people, expecting transformation. In reality, those tools are nice to have, but do not have the impact that people are hoping for. They want tech that reduces friction and meets them where they are, which is why Momentum exists – fulfilling that need of true AI transformation that actually impacts results.”
The findings of both reports point to a clear shift in buyer expectations. Teams are no longer rewarding new features or standalone AI experiments. They are prioritizing workflow adoption, clean data, and integrations that reduce complexity, because those foundations determine whether AI drives outcomes or remains limited to assistance.
The Voice of the Market 2026 report is based on thorough analysis of buyer and operator conversations across active B2B enterprise opportunities, identifying recurring operational themes, AI maturity signals, and buying patterns that shape how revenue teams adopt AI in practice.
