Around the world, CEOs are not ex­pect­ing much in 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the PwC’s 2026 Glob­al CEO Sur­vey, on­ly three in ten (30 per cent) CEOs are con­fi­dent about rev­enue growth in 2026 as most strug­gle to turn AI in­vest­ment in­to tan­gi­ble re­turns while one in eight (12 per cent) of CEOs say AI has de­liv­ered both cost and rev­enue ben­e­fits, while com­pa­nies that have scaled AI with strong foun­da­tions are pulling ahead.

The re­port said there were al­so ris­ing con­cerns about tar­iffs and cy­ber risk that add to pres­sure, as CEOs ques­tion whether they are trans­form­ing fast enough.

Bri­an Hack­ett, ter­ri­to­ry leader, PwC Trinidad and To­ba­go, said, “Amid un­cer­tain­ty, it’s cru­cial to be pre­pared for what’s next. CEOs who haven’t yet em­braced the fu­ture should seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to step for­ward. Growth isn’t about mere­ly weath­er­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty; it’s about tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tions to use avail­able re­sources, in­no­vat­ing, in­vest­ing, and pro­pelling growth both now and in the fu­ture.”

The re­port said CEO con­fi­dence has soft­ened fur­ther amid ris­ing ex­po­sure to ex­ter­nal risks. One in five CEOs glob­al­ly (20 per cent) say their or­gan­i­sa­tion is high­ly or ex­treme­ly ex­posed to the risk of sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial loss from tar­iffs over the next 12 months, though ex­po­sure varies wide­ly by re­gion—from six per cent across the Mid­dle East to 28 per cent in the Chi­nese Main­land and 35 per cent in Mex­i­co. Among US CEOs, 22 per cent re­port high ex­po­sure.

The sur­vey is based on re­spons­es from 4,454 CEOs across 95 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries.

Fraz­er Lind­say, CEO of the PwC mem­ber firms op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean said, “Across the re­gion, lead­ers are fac­ing im­me­di­ate pres­sures while shap­ing re­silient, fu­ture-ready economies. Their grow­ing com­mit­ment to in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy, trust, and in­no­va­tion, even in the ab­sence of im­me­di­ate re­turns, is re­mark­able. CEOs lead­ing the charge of trans­for­ma­tive growth and dis­rup­tion will be those who act bold­ly with pur­pose and main­tain a clear vi­sion that dri­ves their peo­ple, part­ners, and com­mu­ni­ties to­wards a col­lec­tive fu­ture.”

The sur­vey points to a grow­ing di­vide be­tween com­pa­nies pi­lot­ing AI and those de­ploy­ing it at scale. CEOs who par­tic­i­pat­ed have re­port­ed both cost and rev­enue gains are two to three times more like­ly to say they have em­bed­ded AI ex­ten­sive­ly across prod­ucts and ser­vices, de­mand gen­er­a­tion, and strate­gic de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

CEOs have al­so re­port­ed spend­ing 47 per cent of their time fo­cused on is­sues with a hori­zon of less than one year, com­pared with just 16 per cent on de­ci­sions look­ing more than five years ahead.