AI adoption is no longer a future-state discussion. It's happening now — and for most mid-market organizations, the hard part isn't getting started. It's keeping up.

Netrio commissioned independent research firm Censuswide to survey 401 US IT leaders at companies with 200–5,000 employees. The result is a comprehensive look at the state of AI in the mid-market: what's working, where the gaps are, and what leaders are betting on next.

Key findings:

81.8% of respondents already have AI in production or widespread use, but only 26.2% have scaled and governed it enterprise-wide. Confidence in AI's ROI is nearly universal (96.3%), yet 73.1% have experienced an AI-related security incident or near-miss. More than half are acting on AI outputs without any human review.

Investment intentions are significant — a mean of $446,000 planned over the next 12–24 months — but organizations say their biggest obstacles remain data readiness, integration complexity, and internal capability gaps. The foundations required to scale AI well are still being built.