Genpact finds $18tn in trapped AI value
Genpact and analyst firm HFS Research have published a new global study, ‘The $18 Trillion Opportunity: How Four Enterprise Debts Will Make or Break Your AI Future’, that identified four interconnected enterprise ‘debts’ preventing organisations from unlocking their true value.
The research looked at over 2,000 enterprise executives spanning 16 industries and 14 functions and found nearly $18 trillion in recoverable enterprise value sitting inside Global 2000 companies. The research defines enterprise debt as “the accumulated drag on a business from outdated technology, poor data quality, inefficient processes, and underprepared talent.” These four debts compound each other and create unnecessary limitations on company performance.
"Resolving these debts is the largest underutilised performance opportunity in business today,” said Balkrishan ‘BK’ Kalra, president and CEO of Genpact, an agentic and advanced technology solutions company leveraging process intelligence and artificial intelligence to deliver measurable outcomes. “You cannot out-innovate broken foundations. Understanding exactly where these debts live and how to resolve them requires context-rich process intelligence. This is why our core conviction is that there is 'No Artificial Intelligence without Process Intelligence.'”
Indeed, the report states that resolving enterprise debts can unlock approximately 8% faster annual revenue growth and 16% annual cost reduction. With nearly 13% of average function spend now flowing into AI, the gap between ambition and foundation has never been more costly.
Of the leaders surveyed, 85% said enterprise debts are actively limiting their AI value, but over half had no funded plan to address them. With only 33% of enterprise data AI-ready today, with around 40% of employee time each week lost to inefficient or manual processes, with core enterprise systems on average 10 years old, and with only 32% of the workforce AI-ready – it is clear that something needs to be done. And at pace.
Addressing the $18 trillion opportunity
HFS and Genpact calculated the aggregate “value at stake” by applying respondent-reported revenue uplift and cost reduction estimates across the combined revenue base of the Global 2000. Of this sum, process and data debt each represent nearly $7.7 trillion of the total opportunity.
Phil Fersht, founder and CEO of HFS Research, commented: "AI is exposing every weakness enterprises have spent decades learning to live with. Poor process discipline, fragmented data, legacy technology, and talent gaps are no longer operational nuisances. They are now direct barriers to growth, productivity, and competitiveness.”
Despite the scale of the opportunity, more than 50% of enterprises have no funded debt resolution initiative in motion. Scaled resolution programmes, in fact, have only been established by 6% of respondents, but those with measurable results. At the end of the day, enterprise debt is not just a technology problem, it’s a business performance issue that limits growth, raises cost, and undermines AI value. Most enterprises know they are unprepared; more need to take action.
Genpact was recently named a Rising Star for Modernisation and AI/ML Enablement Services in ISG's 2026 Provider Lens evaluation of Databricks Ecosystem Partners. Genpact distinguishes modernisation from migration by embedding data product engineering, semantic modelling, and agent integration into transformation programs, rather than positioning them as downstream enhancements.
