{
  "id": 14133737,
  "title": "Adobe study finds 57 per cent of SEA firms stuck in AI’s “Frozen Middle”",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/13/adobe-study-finds-57-per-cent-of-sea-firms-stuck-in-ais-frozen-middle",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-13T06:00:12.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "e27",
    "slug": "e27",
    "url": "https://e27.co/adobe-study-finds-57-per-cent-of-sea-firms-stuck-in-ais-frozen-middle-20261013/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Adobe's 2026 State of AI Readiness Report reveals that 57% of Southeast Asian firms are stuck in AI's \"Frozen Middle,\" unable to scale their projects despite increasing investments. Of the 461 senior executives surveyed, 73% are boosting their AI spending annually, yet 48% have given up on their first AI use case or are working on their first one. The report identifies three key challenges hindering AI adoption in the region: a lack of clear ownership, inadequate measurement of ROI, and insufficient skills within organizations.\n\nApproximately 57% of companies are in the \"Frozen Middle,\" piloting or deploying AI without the necessary coordination for scaling. For agentic AI, which can execute multi-step tasks autonomously, this figure rises to 40%. Moreover, 79% of companies in the region are at an early stage of AI readiness, the highest among Asia Pacific countries.\n\nThe report highlights a 36% failure rate in AI proposals getting past IT evaluation, with security review rejection rates nearly doubling in highly regulated industries like banking and healthcare. A significant issue is the lack of an AI owner with budget authority, with only 12% of companies having such a figure. Only 8% of companies measure AI return on investment comprehensively, often relying on usage metrics rather than output quality.\n\nAdobe's Senior Director, Digital Strategy Group Asia Pacific, Jeremy Willmott, emphasizes that organizations establishing clear ownership, shared measures of success, and stronger collaboration between business and IT will be better positioned to move beyond isolated pilots and achieve sustainable impact. The report suggests that investing in employees who have already successfully implemented AI could be a practical approach to scale, rather than relying solely on vendor pitches.",
  "summary": "Southeast Asian companies are not short of money for AI. Most of them simply can’t get their projects past their own IT and security teams. That is the uncomfortable picture painted by the Southeast Asia findings of Adobe’s 2026 State of AI Readiness Report, released today. The study surveyed 461 senior executives in the region […] The post Adobe study finds 57 per cent of SEA firms stuck in AI’s…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}