PwC 28th Annual Global CEO Survey 2025: Reinvention in Uncertain Times

Introduction: CEO Survey 2025 Reveals a World of Paradox

The CEO survey 2025 from PwC paints a picture of global business leadership navigating profound contradictions. Based on responses from 4,454 chief executives across 95 countries and territories, the PwC 28th Annual Global CEO Survey reveals leaders who are simultaneously more cautious about near-term prospects and more ambitious about long-term transformation. CEOs are investing heavily in AI despite uncertain returns, pursuing innovation while managing unprecedented volatility, and attempting to balance microscope-level threat detection with telescope-level opportunity identification.

This tension across time horizons is the defining theme of the 2025 survey. In the near term, CEOs see a world beset by challenges—macroeconomic volatility, cyber risk, geopolitical conflict, and regulatory complexity. Their short-term confidence has declined significantly, with only 30% expressing strong confidence in 12-month revenue growth, down from 38% the previous year. Yet simultaneously, these same leaders are making bold, multiyear bets on AI, sector expansion, and business model reinvention that signal deep conviction about future opportunities.

For investors, board members, and strategic planners, the CEO survey 2025 provides an unparalleled window into how the world’s most senior business leaders are processing uncertainty and allocating resources. The findings suggest that the companies best positioned for the future are those whose leadership can hold both perspectives simultaneously—managing near-term risks while investing aggressively in long-term transformation, as explored in our analysis of the Bain Global PE Report.

AI at Enterprise Scale: The Revenue Reality for CEOs

The CEO survey 2025 provides the most comprehensive view yet of AI’s actual business impact. The headline finding is sobering: while close to a third (30%) of CEOs report increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months and a quarter (26%) are seeing lower costs, more than half (56%) say they have realized neither revenue nor cost benefits from their AI investments. This reality check challenges the euphoric narratives around AI’s transformative potential while confirming that early movers are beginning to see tangible returns.

The sector variation is striking. Technology, media, and telecom CEOs lead AI adoption, with 38% reporting revenue increases from AI, while private equity and principal investor CEOs report the lowest impact, with 82% seeing no revenue effect. Financial services CEOs express the most anxiety about AI’s pace of change, with 53% saying their biggest concern is whether their company is transforming fast enough to keep up with technology.

The survey reveals an important nuance about AI investment: CEOs are forging ahead with investment even though immediate returns are often elusive. This reflects a strategic calculation that the costs of not investing in AI—in terms of competitive position, talent attraction, and future capability—outweigh the risks of investing without immediate returns. Companies are treating AI investment as strategic infrastructure rather than expecting project-level ROI, a perspective validated by the rapid capability improvements documented in our Gemini technical report analysis.

Importantly, the survey identifies a widening gap between AI leaders and laggards. The 30% of companies seeing AI revenue already are reinvesting those returns into more advanced capabilities, creating a virtuous cycle that compounds their advantage. Companies that delay AI adoption risk finding that the gap becomes insurmountable as leading firms build proprietary data assets, develop organizational AI capabilities, and establish customer relationships based on AI-enhanced value propositions.

Business Reinvention: CEOs Cross Sector Boundaries

One of the most significant findings in the CEO survey 2025 is the scale of cross-sector competition. More than 42% of CEOs say their companies have begun competing in new sectors over the past five years—a remarkable figure that suggests a fundamental reconfiguration of industry boundaries. Among those planning large acquisitions over the next three years, four in ten expect to do deals in other sectors or industries entirely.

This sector convergence is driven by several forces. Technology capabilities—particularly in AI, data analytics, and digital platforms—are increasingly transferable across industries. Companies that have built strong digital foundations in one sector find they can apply those capabilities to adjacent or even distant markets. Healthcare companies are entering wellness and consumer products. Financial services firms are moving into commerce and lifestyle services. Technology companies are expanding into healthcare, education, and energy.

The implications for competitive strategy are profound. Traditional industry analysis frameworks, which assume relatively stable industry boundaries and predictable competitor sets, are becoming less useful as companies face competition from unexpected directions. CEOs must develop competitive strategies that account for both traditional rivals and potential disruptors from adjacent sectors—a challenge that requires broader scanning, more flexible business models, and faster strategic response capabilities.

Among industrials and services CEOs, 52% say their companies have competed in new sectors in the last five years—the highest rate of any sector. This suggests that traditional industrial companies are actively diversifying, driven by both opportunity and defensive necessity as technology companies encroach on their traditional domains. The era of clearly defined industry boundaries is ending, and the CEO survey 2025 provides compelling evidence that corporate leaders are already responding to this reality.

CEO Confidence and the Global Growth Outlook

The confidence metrics in the CEO survey 2025 tell a story of increasing caution. Only 30% of CEOs are very or extremely confident about their company’s revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% in the previous survey and the recent peak of 56% in 2022. This declining confidence reflects the cumulative impact of macroeconomic volatility, persistent inflation in some regions, rising interest rates, and geopolitical uncertainty that has made short-term planning extraordinarily difficult.

However, the longer-term outlook is notably more optimistic. CEOs express significantly more confidence in three-year revenue prospects than in 12-month results, suggesting that while they see near-term headwinds, they believe their strategic investments—in AI, innovation, and sector expansion—will produce results over the medium term. This divergence between short-term caution and medium-term optimism is consistent across regions and sectors.

Time allocation data reveals how CEOs are managing this tension. Survey respondents report spending nearly half (47%) of their time on issues with time horizons of less than one year, while only 16% is dedicated to activities with horizons beyond five years. This three-to-one ratio between short-term and long-term focus raises questions about whether CEOs are allocating sufficient strategic attention to the transformative opportunities they claim to be pursuing. The most successful reinventors may be those who find ways to redistribute this balance, devoting more leadership attention to long-horizon activities even as short-term pressures intensify.

Tariffs and Geopolitical Impact on CEO Strategy

Geopolitical concerns pervade the CEO survey 2025 results. Almost a third of CEOs (29%) say tariffs will reduce their company’s net profit margin over the next 12 months. While the majority (60%) expect little to no change, the concentration of tariff impact on specific sectors—particularly consumer markets and industrials—is driving significant strategic adjustment in those industries.

Among consumer markets CEOs, 23% report high exposure to tariffs, while 32% of government and public sector CEOs say geopolitical uncertainty has made them less likely to make large new investments. These numbers represent real economic impact: reduced investment, slower hiring, delayed expansion plans, and increased hedging costs that collectively weigh on economic growth.

CEOs are responding with a mix of defensive and offensive strategies. On the defensive side, companies are diversifying supply chains, building inventory buffers, and restructuring operations to reduce geopolitical exposure. On the offensive side, some companies are finding opportunities in geopolitical fragmentation—serving as bridges between blocs, providing localized solutions that multinational competitors cannot easily replicate, or exploiting market gaps created when competitors retreat from uncertain regions, consistent with patterns identified in the McKinsey Global Institute analysis.

Trust, Stakeholder Relations, and CEO Priorities

The trust dimension of the CEO survey 2025 provides compelling evidence that stakeholder confidence has become a material business factor. Two-thirds of CEOs (66%) say stakeholder trust concerns have arisen in at least one area of business operations over the last 12 months. More significantly, the survey reveals a significant gap in total shareholder returns between public companies experiencing the most and the fewest trust concerns.

This trust premium reflects a broader shift in how markets value corporate behavior. ESG considerations, data privacy practices, employee relations, community impact, and ethical technology use all contribute to stakeholder trust—and all increasingly affect financial performance through customer loyalty, employee retention, regulatory treatment, and investor confidence. CEOs who manage trust as a strategic asset are generating measurable outperformance.

The survey identifies cyber risk as a particularly acute trust concern, with 31% of government and public sector CEOs reporting high exposure to significant financial loss from cyber incidents. This concern has intensified as organizations become more digitally dependent and as cyber threats grow in sophistication and scale. For many CEOs, cybersecurity has moved from a technical issue managed by IT departments to a strategic risk requiring board-level attention and significant resource allocation.

Innovation and the Reconfiguration of Industries

The CEO survey 2025 highlights innovation as a primary vehicle for navigating uncertainty. CEOs across sectors are prioritizing innovation not just as a growth driver but as a survival mechanism. In rapidly changing markets, the ability to develop new products, services, and business models is increasingly what separates companies that thrive from those that decline.

The survey reveals important patterns in how innovation is being pursued. Financial services firms, facing disruption from fintech and technology companies, are investing heavily in digital customer experiences and AI-powered advisory services. Healthcare companies are pursuing precision medicine, telehealth, and wellness platforms. Industrial companies are developing smart manufacturing capabilities and service-based business models. Across sectors, the common thread is a recognition that incremental improvement is insufficient and that transformative innovation is required.

The reconfiguration of industries described by PwC—where technology companies enter healthcare, healthcare enters wellness, finance enters commerce, and traditional boundaries dissolve—creates both enormous opportunity and existential threat. CEOs who understand this reconfiguration and position their companies to lead or adapt will define the next era of business. Those who cling to traditional industry definitions and competitive frameworks risk being disrupted by competitors they never anticipated.

Strategic Implications: What the CEO Survey 2025 Means for Business

The CEO survey 2025 ultimately delivers a clear strategic message: the companies that will thrive in the coming decade are those that can simultaneously manage near-term uncertainty and invest in long-term transformation. This dual mandate requires exceptional leadership agility—the ability to move quickly between issues, opportunities, and time horizons without losing strategic coherence.

For corporate boards, the survey provides important guidance on how to evaluate CEO performance and corporate strategy. Boards should expect their CEOs to have clear AI strategies, even if returns are not yet visible. They should support cross-sector expansion when it is strategically coherent. And they should insist on trust management as a core capability, recognizing that stakeholder confidence directly affects financial performance.

For investors, the CEO survey 2025 suggests focusing on companies that demonstrate innovation resilience—the ability to maintain strategic investment through uncertainty. Companies cutting innovation, AI, or strategic investment to manage short-term earnings pressure may be mortgaging their futures. Conversely, companies that maintain bold investment programs while managing near-term risks effectively are likely to be the strongest long-term performers.

The survey’s most profound insight may be its simplest: in a world of persistent uncertainty, the quality of leadership matters more than ever. CEOs who can navigate paradox, manage contradiction, and maintain strategic direction through turbulence will define the business landscape of the coming decade. The PwC Global CEO Survey 2025 provides the data to understand this landscape—the challenge for leaders is to act on it.