Only 28% of AI use cases in infrastructure and operations fully succeed and meet ROI expectations, while 20% fail outright, according to a Gartner survey of 782 IT and operations leaders released April 16. The remaining majority deliver partial results or stall in pilot phases. Gartner found a clear differentiator: organisations with successful AI initiatives invest up to four times more in data and analytics foundations than those that fail. Poor data quality, unclear ownership, and misaligned business goals are the most commonly cited failure factors. The findings arrive as enterprise AI spending hits record highs globally, raising questions about whether organisations are building the underlying infrastructure needed to make AI pay off.