🎙️ EP 10: The $40B GenAI Reality Check: Why 95% of Enterprise AI Projects Are Failing (And What the 5% Winners Know)

🎙 EP 10: The $40 Billion AI Reality Check | MIT's Brutal Wake-Up Call on Enterprise AI's 95% Failure Rate

🛰 Everyone's chasing AI transformation. 95% are just burning money.

This week, Kevin Brockland and Kim Yeoh tear apart MIT's Project NANDA report — the most brutal reality check the AI industry has seen. Despite $30-40 billion in enterprise AI spending, 95% of companies have exactly zero ROI to show for it.

No buzzwords, no consulting deck theater, just the uncomfortable truth about why most AI initiatives die in "pilot purgatory" while a shadow economy of employees quietly uses free tools anyway.

Kevin is a tech investor and startup advisor focused on Southeast Asia's emerging markets. Kim is an ACMA, CGMA qualified finance professional turned startup ecosystem builder. Together, they've watched the AI hype cycle from the inside — and they're not buying the LinkedIn transformation posts.

This episode is raw honesty about: How the "GenAI Divide" became wider than the Grand Canyon Why your expensive AI tools can't remember yesterday's feedback The beautiful rebellion of employees using ChatGPT in secret And what the 5% getting AI right actually do differently

💡 What You'll Learn

Why 95% of AI projects are expensive screensavers that never leave pilot phase What MIT calls "the learning gap" — and why your AI has goldfish memory How 68% of workplace ChatGPT users are flying under corporate radar Why Southeast Asia's experimental culture beats Western AI ethics committees The difference between AI that demos well vs AI that delivers ROI Why augmentation > replacement for sustainable AI adoption

🔎 Key Takeaways

Third-party AI tools have significantly higher success rates than in-house builds Back-office automation drives more ROI than sexy front-end applications Smaller companies dominate AI success because they lack bureaucratic friction The real opportunity lies in AI agents that learn your business context Southeast Asia's speed advantage could leapfrog Western AI adoption

🧠 Sound Bites

"It's like the Emperor's new AI clothes — all slides, no substance" "95% of AI projects are expensive screensavers tucked into the 'didn't work' folder" "Your 10X dev is now 100X, but the bottom tier hasn't changed at all" "People are reverting to ChatGPT because the enterprise tools don't fit their workflow" "We're performing AI transformation rather than actually doing it" "Easy money is gone, but the real money is just getting started"

⏱ Chapters

00:00 – Kevin's Radical Honesty: The AI Theater Performance 01:28 – MIT Drops the 95% Zero ROI Bombshell04:35 – Why Most Companies Are Just Pretending to Transform 06:59 – The Learning Gap: Why AI Has Amnesia 12:24 – Pilot Purgatory vs The 5% Success Club 18:51 – Third-Party vs In-House: The Failure Rate Divide 25:43 – Back-Office Gold Mine: Where Real ROI Lives 29:25 – The Shadow AI Economy: 68% Flying Under Radar 36:28 – Southeast Asia's Speed Advantage 43:00 – Tough Love for AI Startup Founders 46:32 – The GenAI Divide: Temporary or Permanent? 49:03 – What to Remember: Revolution is Real, Just Messier

🙌 Support the Show

If this reality check saved you from becoming part of the 95%: 👉 Tap "Follow" 🔔 Turn on notifications ⭐ Leave us a 5-star rating📤 Share this with someone stuck in pilot purgatory

💬 Let's Connect

🎙 Kim Yeoh → https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiisyuenyeohacmacgma/ 🎙 Kevin Brockland → https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbrockland/ 📬 Join 500+ founders & VCs reading our newsletter → Subscribe on Substack - https://seaofstartups.substack.com/

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