Recent MIT research, popularized in Fortune and other publications, uncovered a sobering statistic: 95% of enterprise GenAI projects fail to deliver positive ROI. Despite billions of dollars invested, most organizations are left with stalled pilots, brittle workflows, and no measurable business impact.
Why is this happening? More importantly, how can your organization avoid falling into the 95%? How can it “cross the GenAI divide,” as the MIT research puts it, into the 5% that see demonstrable ROI?” In one word: data.
The Data-Related Causes of GenAI Failure
MIT’s findings make it clear: the primary barrier to GenAI success is that models are failing to learn. This is a data issue. Enterprises are tripped up by:
- Static, disconnected data sources
AI models are only as good as the data they see. Yet most initiatives rely on static snapshots, siloed datasets, or data lakehouses with incomplete data. Without live, comprehensive access, AI is blind to context, and cannot effectively learn. - Lack of trustworthy, governed data
Enterprise AI requires consistent, explainable, policy-compliant information. However, data lineage, access controls, and semantic clarity are often missing — making outputs unreliable and unfit for business-critical workflows. - Failure to integrate with existing operations
AI will fail if it cannot align with how business processes actually run. Data that isn’t delivered with this business context — understandable to the people owning sales, finance, or other operational processes — limits adoption. - Inability to learn and adapt over time
Most systems don’t retain context or improve from feedback. Users are left re-entering prompts and data repeatedly, while trust erodes. AI without memory is AI without ROI.
These are fundamentally data problems, not AI problems.
How Denodo Helps Organizations to Cross the Divide
The Denodo Platform is purpose-built to overcome these exact challenges. By providing a logical data management layer, Denodo enables organizations to deliver the right data — live, governed, and contextualized — to AI systems and their users. Here’s how:
- Live, federated access across silos
Denodo connects data warehouses, data lakes, legacy systems, SaaS apps, APIs, and more — without requiring costly data duplication. AI agents and models get real-time access to the freshest enterprise data. - Trusted, governed foundation
With robust metadata management, lineage, access control, and policy enforcement, Denodo enables AI outputs that are explainable, secure, and regulatory-compliant. - Semantic abstraction in the language of business
Denodo provides a semantic layer that provides complete business context, so AI systems can deliver insights aligned with actual workflows and user expectations. - Adaptability for AI-driven workflows
Denodo supports metadata-driven retrieval augmented generation (RAG), in which metadata–not the data itself–is indexed. This enables agentic systems to determine, on-the-fly, what is the most relevant and up-to-date data for the task at hand, and then query that data from the original source systems, in real time. The result? AI that continuously learns and refines, and can deal with edge cases by using exactly the right data for the given situation.
Why This Matters for ROI
The MIT report highlights that only 5% of organizations see real impact, while others are stuck in pilots. What sets the successful few apart is their ability to integrate AI into business workflows with learning-capable, adaptive systems.
Denodo has already delivered positive ROI for customers. Customers across many industries including financial services and industrial manufacturing have deployed to production and enjoyed measurable benefits.
With Denodo, your GenAI initiatives don’t just generate content — they generate ROI.
The Full Promise of AI
If your GenAI initiatives are struggling to scale, you’re not alone — but you don’t have to stay in the 95%. By addressing the data challenges at the root of AI project failure, Denodo helps enterprises cross the AI Divide and realize the full promise of AI.
Ready to turn AI investment into business impact?
Contact us to learn how to make that happen.
- Why Most GenAI Projects Fail — and How Denodo Can Help You Cross the GenAI Divide - August 28, 2025
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- The Lakehouse Isn’t The End Game — Here’s What Comes Next - May 22, 2025