- New World Economic Forum report shows how AI is driving measurable performance gains in more than 30 countries and 20 industries.
- Key factors behind successful AI scaling include embedding AI into enterprise strategy, redesigning work for human-AI collaboration and strengthening data foundations.
- The Forum announces a new cohort of MINDS – 20 pioneers driving high-impact AI solutions in disease detection, energy optimization, supply-chain resilience and more.
Geneva, Switzerland, 19 January 2026 – The World Economic Forum has released today a new report revealing successful AI stories that are already delivering measurable performance gains and how pioneering organizations are moving beyond experimentation to achieve impact at scale. As investment accelerates and expectations rise, the findings highlight a growing divide between companies that have built the capabilities to scale AI and those still struggling to deploy it effectively, showing how this gap can be bridged through lessons drawn from real-world use cases.
Proof over Promise: Insights on Real-World AI Adoption from 2025 MINDS Organizations, produced in collaboration with Accenture, draws on insights from both cohorts of MINDS (Meaningful, Intelligent, Novel, Deployable Solutions), a global Forum programme showcasing high-impact, real-world AI applications. Analysing hundreds of cases in more than 30 countries and over 20 industries (including healthcare, energy and infrastructure), an independent Impact Council of leading executives and experts identified clear common patterns among the most promising cases. These include embedding AI into strategic decision-making, redesigning work to strengthen human-AI collaboration, strengthening data foundations, modernizing technology platforms and supporting all of this with responsible governance.
“AI offers extraordinary potential, yet many organizations remain unsure about how to realize it,” said Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer, World Economic Forum. “The selected use cases show what is possible when ambition is translated into operational transformation and our new report provides a practical guide to help others follow the path these leaders have set.”
“Trusted, advanced AI can transform businesses, but it requires organizing data and processes to achieve the best of technology and – this is key – it also requires human ingenuity to maximize returns on AI investments,” said Manish Sharma, Chief Strategy and Services Officer at Accenture. “We encourage organizations to have a clear game plan, and focus on responsible innovation, as they seek to implement and scale AI.”
ADVERTISEMENTThe Forum also announced the second cohort of MINDS, 20 pioneers driving high-impact AI solutions in areas such as disease detection, energy optimization, supply-chain resilience and more. The full list of organizations in the first and second cohort of MINDS can be found below. Applications for the third MINDS cohort are already open. Public and private organizations are invited to apply, providing clear indication of the impact, novelty and compliance of their AI project. Winners will be selected by an independent council after a shortlisting process conducted by the World Economic Forum.
First and Second Cohort of MINDS: AI Pioneers Driving High-Impact, Scalable Solutions
Information Technology
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) & Synopsys (USA): Integrated reinforcement learning and agentic AI into chip-design workflows, doubling designer productivity and shortening sign-off times at scale.
- EXL Services (USA): Automated up to 80% of legacy-to-cloud code migration with AI agents, cutting project timelines by up to two years and reducing costs 20%-40%.
- KPMG & SAP (Netherlands, Germany): Scaled an AI copilot trained on 200,000 SAP documents to speed configuration, cut rework in half and accelerate enterprise migrations by 18%.
Energy Management
- Horizon Power & TerraQuanta (China): Built a weather-forecasting AI that improves energy-market prediction efficiency 50,000x, reducing volatility and boosting trading performance.
- Schneider Electric (France): Delivered room-level energy optimization via on-device AI, achieving 5%-15% in energy savings within two weeks while maintaining comfort.
- Siemens (Switzerland): Brought closed-loop AI autonomy to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning operations, improving comfort by 25% and reducing energy use by over 6% with a scalable, infrastructure-agnostic engine.
- National Institute of Clean and Low-Carbon Energy (China): Combined a domain-specialized LLM with time-series forecasting to improve energy-market prediction accuracy and reduce energy usage by 95%.
- China Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute, Huaneng Jilin Power Generation Co., Ltd. New Energy Branch, and China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd. Jiangsu Branch (China): Deployed AI monitoring and control for renewable energy infrastructure and robotic intervention safety, achieving 90% increase in accuracy in defect detection.
- State Grid Corporation of China (China): Scaled real-time AI orchestration for megacity power systems, achieving sub-minute control across 15,000+ users to enhance energy resilience.
Battery Manufacturing
- CATL & AIMS (Hangzhou Augmented Intelligence Manufacturing Solution) (China): Cut quality variation by 50%, halved operator workload and boosted production speed with a hybrid AI system built for real-time optimization in data-scarce industrial environments.
- CATL (China): Automated battery cell design with physics-ML integration, generating optimal designs in minutes and cutting prototype cycles by nearly 50%.
- Tsinghua University and Electroder (China): Used physics-grade AI simulation to shrink battery cell R&D cycles from years to weeks, cutting waste by 40% and speeding concept to prototype by a factor of 3.6.
Global Health & Healthcare
- Ant Group (China): Deployed a nationwide multimodal AI health platform delivering 90%+ diagnostic accuracy and 80% faster clinician research in 5,000 institutions.
- Landing Med (China): Scaled AI cytology screening in 91% of remote areas in Chinese provinces, enabling 13 million+ early cancer screenings through cloud-edge medical imaging.
- Social Medical Corporation Genshukai & Fujitsu (Japan): Applied AI agents to hospital management, saving 400+ staff hours and generating $1.4 million in revenue uplift.
- Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia & AmplifAI (Saudi Arabia): Piloted AI thermal imaging that cuts clinician time by 90% and treatment costs by up to 80% for early diabetic-foot detection.
- Sanofi & OAO (France): Built an AI-first enterprise model generating 1,300+ use cases, accelerating development cycles and driving measurable commercial uplift.
Robotics
- Hyundai & DEEPX (Republic of Korea): Brought ultra-efficient AI to autonomous robots, achieving 240% GPU-level performance at one-eighth of the power, and enabling low-cost, real-time robotics at scale.
Financial Services
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC): Deployed a 100 billion parameter financial model for 400,000 employees, generating RMB 500 million in profit gains and scaling up to millions of automated daily decisions.
Retail, Consumer Goods & Lifestyle
- PepsiCo (USA): Deployed 3D vision on edge machines for smart factory operations, reducing waste by 0.15% and increasing savings by over $100,000 annually.
- Wumart & Dmall (China): Unified retail operations with real-time AI workflows that optimize pricing, reduce shrink and lower energy use in store networks.
Chemical & Scientific Discovery
- Deep Principle (China): Used multi-agent AI to automate over half of materials simulations, cutting experimental costs and accelerating discovery cycles.
- Phagos (France): Achieved 95% accuracy in AI-designed phage therapies, speeding discovery cycles 10x and providing a scalable alternative to antibiotics.
- UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases & SandboxAQ (USA): Used physics-native AI and quantum chemistry to accelerate Parkinson’s drug discovery 36x, achieving 30x higher hit rates in early-stage screening.
Engineering, Construction & Infrastructure
- Hitachi Rail (Japan): Unified rail operations with an AI analytics platform that cuts delays, reduces depot energy use and lowers maintenance costs through condition-based optimization.
- Fujitsu (Japan): Rolled out AI agents across the supply chain to cut inventory costs by $15 million, reduce stock by $20 million and halve operational headcount through real-time autonomous forecasting.
- Lenovo (China): Orchestrated global supply chains through a unified AI agent that improves logistics accuracy by 30% and flags disruptions up to two weeks earlier.
- Cambridge Industries (USA): Enabled AI-driven road and construction-site safety through edge-governed LLMs, cutting emergency repair costs by nearly 50% while creating jobs for local communities.
Advanced Manufacturing
- Foxconn & Boston Consulting Group, BCG (Taiwan, China; USA): Scaled an AI agent ecosystem that automates 80% of decision workflows in global operations, unlocking an estimated $800 million in value.
- Siemens & EthonAI (Germany, Switzerland): Standardized AI-enabled visual inspection in factories, saving €30,000-€100,000 per station and scaling autonomous quality control with clear ROI.
- Black Lake Technologies (China): Scaled an AI-orchestrated manufacturing marketplace that lifted factory utilization to 83%, cut energy per unit by 18% and accelerated product cycles from up to a year to as little as one month.
Social & Public Good
- Tech Mahindra (India): Scaled multilingual LLMs serving 3.8 million monthly queries with 92% accuracy, enabling inclusive digital services across the Global South.
From Potential to Performance: How Leading Organizations Are Making AI Work
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