"Where is the value creation?" - Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat on overblown CEO expectations, signs of AI maturity, and putting Palantir's presumption back in its place

Words from Aiman Ezzat, CEO of French services giant Capgemini, that will resonate with a large numbers of IT leaders across every business sector. Tech hype cycles have always been unhelpfully over-excitable and never more so than now, when AI is enabling every one of your competitors to have an advantage over you that your IT team had better start delivering on!

That said, Ezzat does see the situation evolving a little:

AI in the enterprise has become a reality. Maturity is increasing about its possibilities, but also about what it will take to achieve real adoption and measurable results. So 2026 is really the moment of truth for AI, the moment where AI must transition to measurable business impact embedded in core operations, delivering value through AI-powered transformation.

Everyone is trying to accelerate towards this, he says, but there are challenges to be met:

As we move to transformation ...