AI, Connectivity Shaping CEO Priorities: KPMG 2025 Technology & Telecommunications Outlook

The technology and telecommunications sector is undergoing a profound transformation, fuelled by massive investment in AI that is driving automation, efficiency, and decision-making. CEOs across both technology and telecommunications face mounting pressure to harness AI for growth, even as concerns around trust, integrity, and confidence in AI-driven outcomes intensify. 

Against this backdrop, the KPMG 2025 Technology and Telecommunications CEO Outlook survey explores how CEOs are navigating major economic, technological, geopolitical, regulatory, and talent challenges.

In an unpredictable and fast-changing environment, technology and telecommunications CEOs retain strong optimism. As per the KPMG 2025 Technology and Telecommunications CEO Outlook survey, 80% are confident in their companies’ growth prospects, and 83% are positive about the sector’s growth prospects, up from 74% in 2024.

Most of the technology and telecommunications CEOs surveyed (89%) are pursuing inorganic avenues to growth, with 43% showing a “high” appetite for “transformative” acquisitions.

Almost three-quarters of CEOs across both sectors (73%) state their businesses have adapted growth strategies to meet changing market conditions, indicative of heightened exposure to regulatory, infrastructure, and geopolitical challenges.

When asked about top operational priorities to achieve growth, CEOs from telecommunications companies cite digitisation and connectivity (26%), indicating the need to modernise infrastructure to support as-a-service models and roll out 5G, satellite, and software-defined networks to improve global connectivity.

For technology sector leaders, the top aims are reevaluating and adapting business and operating models to enhance innovation (18%) and understanding and implementing generative/agentic AI (18%).

Technology and telecommunications companies are investing heavily in AI, with 71% CEOs of technology companies and 62% CEOs of telecommunications companies intending to allocate 10–20% of their budgets to this technology.

The sector’s confidence in AI is highlighted by the fact that 84% of CEOs across both sectors expect to see a positive ROI in AI within 3 years, and 22% anticipate an ROI in 12 months or less.

Technology and telecommunications CEOs feel that ethical challenges (64%) present the greatest barrier to successful AI implementation, with fears over AI model bias, failure to meet data privacy regulations, and copyright violations from unauthorised usage of intellectual property.

The top challenge in attracting and retaining AI and digital talent is bridging the gap between existing skills and desired capabilities, with respondents from telecommunications (45%) especially worried about this lack of essential resources, compared to 34% of technology CEOs.