Report: Only 2% of HK firms are AI 'pacesetters', lagging behind global average

Hong Kong workplaces are the least prepared to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) out of 30 global markets studied, according to the latest Cisco survey. 

Conducted via a double-blind online survey in August, the Cisco AI Readiness Index 2025 is a global study that gathers insights from 8,039 senior IT and business leaders responsible for AI integration and deployment in organisations with 500 or more employees.

Participants came from 26 industries, including business services, retail, media and communications, and technology, representing 30 markets globally, such as Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, as well as US and UK.

The survey found that only 2% of Hong Kong firms surveyed were considered "pacesetters" - significantly trailing the global average of 13% over the last three years. 

Nearly all pacesetters (99%) had a defined AI strategy, starkly contrasting with the mere 32% of all Hong Kong organisations. These leaders were also significantly more likely to expand AI use, prioritise it in their budgets, invest in data-centre capacity, and meticulously track their AI investments' returns. Furthermore, pacesetters demonstrated heightened awareness of AI-related security threats.

The survey revealed significant hurdles for Hong Kong firms: 38% anticipated a major workload increase, 68% grappled with data centralisation, and just 14% had sufficient chip capacity. Furthermore, fewer than one in five companies could detect AI-specific security threats. Despite these challenges, 71% of organisations planned to deploy AI agents—software designed to autonomously perform tasks—to work alongside employees within a year.

Globally, in the next 12 months, 71% of Pacesetters and 53% of all companies plan to develop real-world agentic use cases. This will strain IT capacity, with 62% expecting workloads to increase by over 30% in two to three years, and over half expecting a 1.5 times rise in five years. Unlike traditional automation, agentic systems act on data, demanding continuous support from networks, compute, and storage.

Meanwhile, 83% of companies are planning to develop or deploy AI agents, and nearly 40% expect them to work alongside employees within a year, focusing on customer support, cybersecurity, and business process automation. This could result in a future workplace where agents assist employees, handle repetitive tasks, autonomously detect security threats, and enhance productivity.

But for the majority of these companies, AI agents are exposing weak foundations — systems that can barely handle reactive, task-based AI, let alone AI systems that act autonomously and learn continuously. More than half (54%) of respondents say their networks can’t scale for complexity or data volume, and just 15% describe their networks as flexible or adaptable. Surveyed business leaders indicated they are facing challenges with their infrastructure, such as high resource allocation for IT, overall readiness to accommodate future AI offerings, and acceptable inference cycle times for use case needs.

Don’t miss: Microsoft rolls out AI agents to help businesses with everyday tasks

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, said: “We're moving past the era of question-answering chatbots and stepping into the next major phase of AI: agents that independently execute tasks. Today's study shows that over 80% of companies are prioritising agentic solutions, with two out of three reporting that these systems are already meeting or exceeding their performance goals.”

“The evidence points to a massive competitive advantage: companies that are further along are seeing dramatically stronger returns than their peers,” Patel added.

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