Manufacturers are betting on agentic AI, but trust, not technology, is now the limiting factor
For much of the past three years, enterprise AI in manufacturing was a story about obstacles. Plants lacked data science talent, legacy systems resisted integration, and business cases were hard to prove. Those barriers shaped budgets, pilots, and vendor pitches alike.
According to Rootstock Software’s 2026 State of AI in Manufacturing Survey, that story is changing. Skills, integration, and cost, the top hurdles when the company ran its previous survey in 2024, have all eased. What has replaced them is a harder question for CIOs to answer: whether AI’s output can be trusted.
From pilots to production
The numbers show a sector past the experimentation phase. Nearly two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed (64%) report that AI initiatives have moved beyond exploration into pilots or into live operation, where they are integrated with or broadly supporting business processes. Looking ahead, 77% plan to increase budgets or resources for AI tools over the...
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