The split, which Sombra calls the AI Dividend Gap, surfaces something counterintuitive: the people reporting the strongest personal productivity benefits from AI are simultaneously the most likely to think those benefits translate into company profit rather than their own wages, workload or career prospects.
The numbers carry weight because they do not come from AI sceptics. The 87% who say they have personally benefited are a near-consensus; the question is where the value ends up. Average corporate AI spend per employee reached $2,068 this year, according to the survey, and at the extreme end, Meta burned through $221 million in tokens in a single month. At that scale, the financial stakes of where AI returns accrue become a material workforce question.
Viacheslav Brui, Data and AI Practice Lead at Sombra, says the pattern should register with leaders before it becomes a retention problem: "The most interesting part is that this isn't coming from people who actually dislike AI. It comes from those who have seen AI firsthand, but still believe the business alone is profiting. Leaders tend to ignore the difference between 'this helps me' and 'this mostly helps them.' They need to show people their part of the benefits if they want employees to fully embrace AI: a lighter load, a quicker path, and a meaningful stake."
The practical implication is that adoption rates and satisfaction scores — the metrics most employers use to track AI rollout success — may understate a quieter form of disengagement. Employees who feel they are providing efficiency gains to the organisation without receiving a proportionate share of those gains have every incentive to moderate their enthusiasm for expanding AI use.
To stay across the latest in cloud, AI and enterprise tech analysis from Compare the Cloud, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://www.comparethecloud.net/newsletter
