AI buying · 2 Nov 2026 · 6 min
Who actually influences enterprise AI buying decisions?
The CIO signs, but the business unit, the data lead and the CISO shape what gets bought. Sampling only C level titles misses most of the decision.
Enterprise AI purchases rarely follow the classic IT buying path. Budgets are increasingly co owned by business units, and the people evaluating models and platforms often sit in data teams rather than central IT.
For researchers, that means a study screening only on 'CIO' or 'IT Director' titles will overrepresent final signoff and underrepresent the evaluation work where preferences actually form.
We recommend screening on purchase role, final decision, strong influence, evaluation, or user, and setting soft quotas across functions so the buying committee is visible in the data.
What we'd investigate next: how influence shifts between pilot and scaled deployment, and whether security signoff has become a gate rather than a check.