AI is projected to boost the U.S. economy by over 14.5% by 2030, according to PwC, making it the second-largest non-government sector after healthcare. The U.S. government and some of the largest companies in the world have committed a staggering $500 billion to AI and data infrastructure under the Stargate initiative, an investment rivaling the market cap of some of the world’s largest companies.
According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 55% of Americans are consciously using AI every day. With AI deeply embedded in the daily lives, from spam filters and streaming recommendations to financial services and healthcare diagnostics, enterprises cannot afford to be passive observers of this technical revolution. An overwhelming number of C-suite executives report that they are preparing to make AI production-ready for their businesses, according to a recent study from Postgres® data and AI leader EDB. Yet readiness is not enough to guarantee success with data and AI.
“Organizations that delay AI adoption will quickly find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. The question isn’t whether AI will impact your industry—it’s whether you’ll harness it in time to lead,” says Kevin Dallas, EDB CEO.
How long will consumers tolerate a company not using AI with them to deliver what they want, when they want it, and how they want it?
AI-Powered Personalization: The New Competitive Edge
The expectation of AI-driven experiences is growing. From banking to e-commerce, consumers increasingly demand real-time, hyper-personalized interactions. Companies that fail to leverage AI risk losing customers to competitors who can deliver ultra-tailored insights faster.
McKinsey estimates that AI-driven personalization can almost instantly lift revenues by 5%–15%. In healthcare, several studies have shown that AI is competitive with or even superior to humans at essential healthcare tasks such as initial diagnosis. The transformative potential for AI’s role in complex diseases and medical events is staggering in terms of cost and time efficiencies, cross-learnings, and more. And this is just one example. Chances are, whether working in marketing, finance, legal, or HR, AI is becoming a critical force in decision-making and operational efficiency.
“AI is no longer a future trend—it’s an immediate business imperative. This is existential in nearly every way. If you are not fully embracing this unique moment, the world around you in 1,000 days—or maybe less—will be further away from you than it is now. Companies that build AI-ready, sovereign data platforms today will be the ones defining the next era of industry leadership,” says Dallas.
The Existential Divide: Adapt or Fall Behind
The pace of AI evolution is relentless. New models such as DeepSeek-R1 are reportedly achieving sophisticated reasoning capabilities at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI. If an organization isn’t training AI models at scale and speed, catching up later may be impossible.
This reality presents two paths:
- Embrace AI and integrate it into business operations.
- Hesitate and risk being left behind.
Cultural Norms for AI Success Must Be Transformed by the C-suite
Technology alone does not drive transformation—culture does. The most successful digital transformations of the past two decades prioritized cultural shifts over technological adoption. According to the Wall Street bestseller The Digital Helix, the top-performing 27% of organizations in digital transformation ROI focused three times more on cultural adaptation than on technology itself.
“Executives became leaders of change and were open to the foibles of experimentation. Strategy was not seen as some grand, over-the-horizon thing but as being constantly one step ahead and using data in the context of themes and streams as opposed to silos,” says Michael Gale, author of The Digital Helix, a Thinkers360 top-10 AI influencer, and CMO of EDB.
For fostering a mindset of continuous learning and adaptations, Gale suggests five critical questions to ask within an organization:
- What insights can be extracted from unstructured data to create new value?
- How can AI enhance customer experiences and drive greater value for meeting their needs and wants?
- What is being learned from AI experiments, and how can those learnings be applied and scaled?
- Which teams lack AI-driven co-pilots, and why?
- Is there real-time visibility across the entire data estate to extract and activate insights?
“Success in AI isn’t about adopting new tools—it’s about building a culture that embraces experimentation, learns from data, and applies AI insights strategically,” says Dallas.
Organizations Need a New Data Infrastructure Reality that Is Sovereign and Observable
Trying to capture this tidal wave with outdated ideas of data infrastructure is like installing a steam engine on a sailboat—it’s neither practical nor scalable.
Can an organization’s current data infrastructure scale at least 30%+ year in AI growth rates? Can it give them observability across vast arrays of data in many clouds and across premises in a secure and compliant manner and then let them infuse their new sovereign AI models as they learn?
Organizations must transition to data platforms that are:
- Sovereign – ensuring full control over AI models, data governance, and regulatory compliance
- Observable – providing real-time insights across the entire data fleet
- Scalable – supporting AI’s exponential growth without infrastructure bottlenecks
Organizations using open-source technologies such as PostgreSQL for AI and data observability in hybrid environments are already seeing a 20% higher ROI than others (EDB Study, June 2024). According to Gale, the shift is clear: “The future belongs to companies that integrate AI into their sovereign data platforms and unlock value from unstructured data.”
“The battleground for competitive power is the marriage of AI and data in a sovereign platform that you own—where, when, and how you need it. It is the foundation for the next economic generation and has arrived faster than any other industrial revolution. This is the time to define your AI-driven future,” says Dallas.
