There’s a number haunting the artificial intelligence space: 95%. As in, 95% of generative AI pilots are failing, according to MIT’s influential, arguably overblown research study in August 2025. When Fortune’s Diane Brady spoke with PwC global chairman Mohamed Kande roughly six months later, in Davos, Switzerland, that number was stubbornly high: 56% of CEOs PwC surveyed were getting “nothing” from their AI adoption efforts.
The solution is peace, love, understanding, and good parenting skills, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The $4 trillion market-cap man arrived at the Cisco AI Summit with a message that sounded less like Wall Street rigor and more like a blend of 1960s counterculture and modern parenting: “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”
Sitting down with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Huang addressed the tension facing enterprise leaders who feel the pressure to adopt AI but fear the lack of immediate, quantifiable results. When Robbins asked for the first steps an enterprise should take, Huang dismissed the immediate fixation on spreadsheets.
“I get questions like … ROI,” Huang said. “I wouldn’t go there.”
Instead, he advocated for a philosophy of abundance and messy experimentation, explicitly comparing corporate innovation to raising children. He argued that demanding proof of financial success before allowing an engineer to try a new AI tool is as stifling as asking a child to justify a hobby with a business plan.
