# Why 95% of AI Projects Fail (And What Mid-Market Companies Can Do About It) — Pilot to Production

> MIT research: 95% of AI pilots fail. 84% are leadership failures, not tech.

Canonical: https://thegrowthproject.com/podcast/why-ai-projects-fail/

*Pilot to Production*, the Growth Project podcast — hosted by Sam and Maya.

- Listen: https://thegrowthproject.com/podcast/why-ai-projects-fail/
- Read the article: https://thegrowthproject.com/blog/why-ai-projects-fail/
- Audio: https://thegrowthproject.com/audio/podcast/why-ai-projects-fail.m4a?v=af2d3179

## Transcript

**Sam:** Ninety-five percent. That's how many corporate AI pilots fail. Not "underperform." Fail. Nothing in production.

**Maya:** And here's the part that should annoy you, it's almost never the technology's fault.

**Sam:** Welcome to Pilot to Production, from the Growth Project. I'm Sam.

**Maya:** And I'm Maya. Today: why nearly every AI project dies in the pilot, and the handful of moves the survivors make differently.

**Sam:** Okay, ninety-five percent, where's that from? Because that's the kind of stat people throw around at conferences.

**Maya:** Fair. This one's MIT, 2025. They looked at corporate generative-AI pilots, about ninety-five percent never reached production. And it's trending the wrong way.

**Sam:** Worse. So all the new tooling, the new models...

**Maya:** Doesn't move the number. Because here's the bit everyone skips: RAND looked at why, and eighty-four percent of the failures were leadership and execution. Not the model. The model works. The organisation doesn't ship it.

**Sam:** Paint me that. What does an eighty-four-percent failure look like on the ground?

**Maya:** You've seen it. A company buys a tool, runs a pilot, someone demos it, everyone claps, and then it just lives forever as a "proof of concept." Eight months later it's quietly dead and they're "evaluating other options."

**Sam:** The permanent pilot. [laughs] I've sat in that exact meeting.

**Maya:** Everyone has. The demo worked. The production system was never built. Those are two completely different jobs, and most teams only do the first one.

**Sam:** So if I'm running a thirty-person business with one AI thing limping along in pilot, what actually separates me from the five percent who ship?

**Maya:** Three things, and none of them are the model. First: survivors start with the workflow, not the tool. McKinsey found teams that redesigned the workflow before picking the AI were twice as likely to see real financial return.

**Sam:** Twice, just from doing it in the right order.

**Maya:** Just from asking "where do my people make the same decision over and over," instead of "what model should we use." Second one's unpopular: buy, don't build. Buying and integrating succeeds about sixty-seven percent of the time. Building from scratch? Around twenty-two.

**Sam:** Wait, that's a three-x difference. So the instinct to build your own clever thing...

**Maya:** Is usually the expensive way to join the ninety-five percent. Unless AI is your product, integrate something that already works.

**Sam:** And the third?

**Maya:** Put a date on it. Top mid-market teams go pilot-to-production in about ninety days. Not "let's see how it goes," a real deadline.

**Sam:** That's the part I like, because that's where a mid-sized business actually wins. You're saying small is the advantage here?

**Maya:** It's your weapon. You don't have eighteen layers of approval. You can decide Tuesday and ship by month-end. The enterprise has the budget; you have the speed, and speed is what crosses the gap.

**Sam:** Give me the Monday-morning version. I've got a pilot that's been running a while, what do I do?

**Maya:** One question: when did it start, and what's its production date? If it's older than ninety days with no date, you've got two honest options, kill it or ship it. What you can't do is keep paying to hold it in limbo.

**Sam:** Kill it or ship it. No more permanent proof-of-concept.

**Maya:** And if you can't name a single AI system actually running in production, not a pilot, not a POC, running, then today, you're in the ninety-five percent. The good news? The way out is mostly discipline, not technology.

**Sam:** That's the one to sit with this week. Take your oldest pilot, give it a date or give it a funeral.

**Maya:** Full write-up with every source, MIT, RAND, McKinsey, is on the blog. We'll link it.

**Sam:** This has been Pilot to Production, from the Growth Project. If your AI's stuck between "approved" and "running," that's the gap we close, at thegrowthproject.com.

**Maya:** Thanks for listening. See you next time.