Veeam has unveiled new global research at VeeamON London, highlighting a widening trust gap in enterprise AI adoption. The company’s new Data and AI Trust Gap Report found that while organizations are rapidly deploying AI technologies, most are struggling with the governance, visibility, security, and resilience needed to support them at scale.

The research, based on a survey of 600 senior executives across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and technology sectors, found that 88% of organizations are already using or piloting AI agents. However, only 7% qualify as truly AI-ready. In addition, 95% of respondents said data-related challenges have already slowed their AI initiatives.

According to the findings, AI adoption is advancing much faster than the governance structures designed to manage it. Only 28% of organizations are confident they can detect AI systems operating outside approved parameters. The report suggests that a lack of control, visibility, and accountability is creating a significant trust gap as AI agents move from pilot projects into production environments.

“Most organizations don’t have an AI adoption problem, they have an AI trust problem,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam. “The first phase of AI was defined by infrastructure investment, experimentation, and acceleration. The next phase will be defined by trust. With the widespread adoption of autonomous AI agents operating at machine speed, the question transitions from whether you can use AI, to whether you can ensure all your data is secure, governed, compliant and resilient. And should something go wrong, can you recover with precision? That’s how you accelerate safe AI at scale without accelerating reputational and operational risk.”

The report also identified a perception gap between executive leadership and operational teams responsible for implementing AI strategies. While 65% of CEOs believe they have a complete inventory of AI systems within their organizations, only 48% of technical leaders share that view. Similarly, 52% of CEOs believe they actively lead data initiatives, compared to 41% of CISOs and 38% of CIOs.

Meanwhile, 48% of CEOs believe trusted, secure, and compliant data could unlock revenue growth of more than 25%. At the same time, 83% reported feeling pressure to accelerate AI and data capabilities.

Veeam’s research further suggests that AI-related failures may increasingly stem from data issues rather than traditional system outages. Among organizations currently running AI systems, only 29% said they could quickly identify which systems an AI agent accessed. Just 25% could determine what actions it took, while 24% could identify decisions it influenced. Additionally, only 22% could quickly identify the data used by the system.

Only 40% of respondents expressed high confidence in their ability to isolate and precisely reverse an agentic AI failure.

The study also highlighted the growing challenge of unauthorized AI usage within organizations. According to the findings, 95% of organizations reported unauthorized AI use, while 93% considered it a significant risk. However, only 25% provide approved alternatives for employees, suggesting many organizations are attempting to restrict AI use rather than govern it effectively. Furthermore, 44% identified increased cyber risk as the leading concern associated with “Shadow AI.”

External regulatory pressures are also influencing AI strategies. The report found that 61% of organizations said the EU AI Act has already impacted their AI investment decisions during the past year. Meanwhile, 47% cited maintaining audit trails for AI decisions as their primary compliance concern.

The research also pointed to fragmented ownership as a major obstacle to effective AI governance. Organizations where CISOs are responsible for AI agent risk management were found to be 24% more likely to detect rogue AI behavior. In contrast, organizations operating under shared ownership models were 47% less likely to identify such activity.

According to the report, organizations that successfully align governance, visibility, and accountability are significantly more likely to realize business value from AI investments. Among organizations classified as fully AI-ready, 97% reported measurable benefits from data and AI initiatives, compared with 48% across all respondents.

To address these challenges, Veeam said it is building a Data and AI Trust layer that combines data resilience, security, and governance capabilities. The company aims to help organizations understand how AI systems access data, govern interactions between humans and AI agents, and recover trusted data with precision when incidents occur.

“The findings here leave no room for doubt. When 95% of executives say data challenges are already slowing their AI progress, the bottleneck isn’t the model, it’s trusted, governed, recoverable data,” added Eswaran. “Veeam is building the Data and AI Trust layer to give enterprises the visibility, control and precision recovery needed to scale AI safely and deliver real business value.”

The research was conducted between March 16 and April 6, 2026, and included CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, CDOs, and other senior leaders responsible for data, AI, technology, and compliance across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Following VeeamON London, Veeam will continue discussions around data resilience and trusted AI at VeeamON Sydney on July 30, 2026.

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