Enterprise AI investment has reached record levels. But ask most executives what ROI they're actually seeing, and you get vague answers. After analysing outcomes across 300+ Nexus deployments, here is what the numbers genuinely show.
Year One Is Often Disappointing — And That Is Expected
The median year-one ROI across our client base is 187%. That sounds strong until you realise the distribution is highly skewed: 15% of deployments show returns above 500% in year one, while 20% show returns below 50%. The difference is almost entirely determined by how clearly the problem was defined before development began.
The Three-Year Picture Is More Interesting
Over a three-year horizon, the median ROI rises to 340%. Compounding improvements as models are retrained and use cases expanded explain most of this uplift. Clients who build genuine internal AI capability — rather than treating AI as a managed service — consistently outperform.
