If you've been wondering whether your employer's AI enthusiasm is about to cool off, new research from Accenture suggests the opposite is more likely, at least among Indian business leaders. The firm's "Pulse of Change" research, covering thousands of C-suite and non-C-suite respondents across 20 countries, found that Indian executives are notably more bullish on AI than the global average — and more skeptical that a correction is coming.
According to the India findings, 88% of C-suite leaders in the country plan to increase AI investment in 2026, well above comparable global figures. Only a small share believe the market is in an AI bubble at all, and in the India sample, 50% of leaders said they would actually increase hiring even if a bubble were to burst and valuations corrected. That's a strikingly different posture from the cautious, wait-and-see tone many Western boardrooms have struck this year amid rising scrutiny of AI spending.
The research points to a specific bottleneck behind this confidence: it isn't belief in the technology that's holding companies back, it's people. Twenty-seven percent of Indian executives named a shortage of skilled AI talent as the single biggest factor limiting how much value they can extract from their AI investments — ahead of budget, infrastructure, or data quality concerns. In other words, Indian leadership broadly isn't asking "should we keep investing in AI," it's asking "where do we find the people who can actually make this work."
One detail matters particularly for people earlier in their careers: the global edition of the same research found 52% of leaders expect to hire more entry-level talent specifically because of AI adoption, not fewer. The logic many companies cite is that AI tools lower the bar for certain technical tasks, which can make junior hires more immediately productive on narrower, well-scoped work, even as it raises expectations for how quickly they ramp up.
Take the eye-catching percentages with some caution — survey-based executive sentiment is not the same as actual headcount data, and "plans to increase investment" doesn't guarantee a hiring spree in your specific function. But the consistent thread across this and other 2026 industry surveys is that Indian employers are not treating AI as a passing trend to wait out. If you're building skills right now, the more durable bet is AI fluency applied to your existing domain — finance, marketing, operations, support — rather than AI expertise as a standalone credential, since that's the gap employers say they can't currently fill.
Source: CXOToday