Cursor Launches CFO Council: 88% of Companies Deployed AI, But Only 39% See EBIT Growth

Cursor announced the launch of Cursor CFO Council — a working group of financial directors that will develop a common approach to measuring returns from corporate AI spending, which reached $1.5 trillion globally in 2025.

Why companies find it difficult to measure AI returns

According to recent McKinsey research, 88% of organizations have already implemented AI in at least one business function, but only 39% are able to link these investments to EBIT growth at the company level. AI spending has evolved from a line item for experimental pilots into a major regular operational budget item, but a well-established discipline for measuring its effectiveness has not yet developed — this is precisely the problem the new council aims to solve.

• Global AI spending reached $1.5 trillion in 2025
• 88% of organizations have implemented AI in at least one function (McKinsey data)
• Only 39% of companies can trace the link between AI investments and EBIT growth
• Cursor CFO Council will meet quarterly in different cities around the world

How AI returns are distributed among companies

Analysis by BCG based on Cursor data showed: companies in the top quintile by token usage demonstrated a median annual revenue growth of 16.5%, while companies in the bottom quintile showed only 5.1%. A separate study found that after major model updates in late 2025, employees began sending 44% more messages to AI agents per week, with the increase on complex tasks reaching 68%.

Why benefits are distributed unevenly

Cursor's own Developer Habits Report showed an even more dramatic divide within companies: developers in the top 1% (p99) generated 46 times more AI-assisted code lines per day than the median active user, and merged 15 times more pull requests per week than the median PR author. By Cursor's calculations, the distribution of spending, token consumption, and AI-generated code within companies is more uneven than income distribution in any country in the world, measured by the Gini coefficient.

There are also notable cost differences: the price of a single agent request differed by almost 9 times across different model families, while the cost of one accepted line of code differed by approximately 7 times. This is one reason why companies benefit from having access to multiple models and providers: different models work better for different types of tasks.

What this means

AI spending in companies is growing faster than understanding of how to measure it: the main benefits are concentrated among a small fraction of "super-users" rather than distributed evenly across the organization, and Cursor intends to turn measuring these benefits into a separate corporate discipline through regular dialogue among financial directors.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did companies spend on AI in 2025?

Global AI spending reached $1.5 trillion in 2025, transforming from experimental pilots into a permanent budget item.

What is Cursor CFO Council?

It is a working group of financial directors launched by Cursor that will meet quarterly in different cities around the world to develop a common approach to measuring the effectiveness of AI spending.

How unevenly is AI benefit distributed among employees?

According to Cursor's Developer Habits Report, developers in the top 1% (p99) produce 46 times more AI-assisted code per day and merge 15 times more pull requests per week than the median user — the spread exceeds income inequality in any country in the world.