Benchmark of 500 U.S. firms finds the dividing line is the operating model, not the number of AI tools deployed
Moonnox today released its 2026 Impact of AI on System Integrators Benchmark, a primary research study of 500 U.S. system integrators examining how firms are adopting AI and how it is affecting their economics. While 91 percent of firms are actively deploying or embedding AI, only 15 percent have made it central to how the firm operates, prices, and staffs work.
That 15 percent reports fundamentally different economics. They are nearly three times as likely to see AI as a direct driver of profitability and exit value, more than twice as likely to have protected margins, and more than four times as likely to know what their AI investment returns. The difference in the findings highlights that it’s not firm size, platform, or budget. It is whether leadership treated AI as an operating-model decision or an IT-procurement one.
“It’s exciting that our research study validates what we’ve been seeing in real time with our own customers. The firms achieving the strongest results are the ones building AI at the center of their operating model, tying it directly to pricing, staffing, knowledge retention, and margin protection. That’s when AI moves beyond productivity theater and demonstrating measurable enterprise value.”
The report also documents the Build Trap. More than a quarter of firms tried to build AI capability internally and abandoned it, the single largest answer in the study, while another quarter are still on that path.
The full report is available at moonnox.com/research.
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