UK finance chiefs turn sharply more optimistic on AI

TL;DR:

• Deloitte’s survey of 58 UK chief financial officers found 73% optimistic that AI will improve their businesses’ performance, against 59% at the end of last year and 39% two years ago.
• Geopolitical concern fell to 68 from 79 on a 0-100 scale, and energy price worry to 60 from 70.
• Despite the improved mood, CFOs continue to prioritise cost reduction and cash control.

Sentiment among the finance chiefs of Britain’s largest companies has moved faster on AI than on almost anything else Deloitte tracks. Its latest quarterly survey, covering 58 CFOs polled between 1 and 13 July, puts optimism about AI improving business performance at 73% — a fourteen-point rise in roughly six months and nearly double the level of two years ago.

The wider risk picture eased at the same time. Ratings for geopolitical concern dropped to 68 from 79 at the start of 2026, and worry about energy prices or supply disruption fell to 60 from 70 in the first quarter. Concern about UK productivity and competitiveness was little changed at 63.

Optimism has not loosened the purse strings

Deloitte UK chief economist Debapratim De attributed the improvement partly to the global economy weathering the Iran conflict better than feared, while noting that “concerns over geopolitics and domestic competitiveness remain elevated. CFOs continue to prioritise cost reduction and cash control in this environment.”

That combination is the interesting part. Believing AI will improve performance and holding spending flat are not contradictory positions if the expected gains are efficiency gains — which is consistent with the pattern in recent UK deployments, from Yorkshire Water’s asset monitoring to NHS scribing pilots. Optimism about a cost-reducing technology tends to reinforce cost discipline rather than relax it.

The reading also cuts against the more cautious signal from earlier this month, when reporting suggested some chief executives were scaling back AI programmes after unexpected costs. Finance chiefs, judging by this survey, are not sharing that retreat.

Looking forward

A survey of 58 large-company CFOs is not a read on the wider UK economy, and it says nothing about the smaller firms where adoption remains thinnest. What it does establish is that the people who sign off budgets at Britain’s biggest employers have moved from scepticism to expectation in about two years. Whether that converts into capital allocation, rather than remaining sentiment, is the question the next quarterly reading will start to answer.