Some companies are beginning to report financial benefits from artificial intelligence investments, as interest in the technology shifts from hype to measurable returns in the latest quarter.
Corporate AI investment has surged as companies look to boost efficiency and become more profitable, reaching $581.7 billion in 2025, up 130% from the previous year, according to the Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index report.
As CEOs tout the tech's benefits and hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are expected to spend $700 billion combined this year on its infrastructure, investors are looking for measurable gains.
Now, with third-quarter earnings season underway, some companies are beginning to put numbers around those benefits.
Spanish banking giant Santander said Wednesday that it saw AI initiatives generate 194 million euros ($216 million) in business value in the first nine months of 2026.
Santander Chief Financial Officer José García Cantera told CNBC that AI is helping the bank reduce low-value tasks so employees can focus on higher-value work.
"This affects both revenue and costs, so we are actually in the quarter where we can actually link directly to AI a positive contribution," Cantera said.
"AI is being embedded in all the processes that we are conducting at the bank, so it's really difficult to just say how much comes from AI, but clearly AI is improving the quality of our services to clients."
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told CNBC that AI was beginning to contribute to the company's bottom line.
Novartis reported third-quarter core operating income of $6.04 billion, up 10% year-on-year at constant currencies. The company did not quantify how much of that was attributable to AI but Narasimhan told CNBC: "I think this is the first quarter I've really seen AI start to improve actually our P&L on a tangible basis."
"We're working on R&D to see if it can really increase R&D productivity," Narasimhan said on "Squawk Box Europe" on Tuesday.
"We're already seeing some of the productivity you saw in the bottom-line performance of what we can do with AI from M&S [marketing & sales]."
Meanwhile, Standard Chartered Chief Financial Officer Manus Costello told "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday that the company is seeing AI "appear everywhere across the business."
The bank reported third-quarter operating income growth of 14% at constant currency, excluding notable items.
"I think you can see it in the top line growth that we're delivering, and you can see it in that operating leverage that I talked about," Costello said, adding that AI is helping managers drive better relationships with customers and generate more income.
"We're also seeing that strong operating leverage that I talked about, where income is growing much faster than costs, and some of that is because we've been able to deploy AI tools to improve core processes and enable us to scale those up very efficiently," he added.
Carlsberg CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen said on "Squawk Box Europe" this week that it's not seeing AI benefits at scale, but the technology has impacted internal processes, cost efficiency, commercial and pricing processes, marketing and its supply chain.
The company's revenue grew 4.9% in the third quarter.
Elsewhere, tech firms are also reporting gains. Meta said in its Oct. 21 earnings that its AI investments were delivering "substantial incremental advertising revenue," while total revenue jumped 26% in the quarter ended Sept. 30.
While Alphabet's Google Search revenue growth slowed amid concerns about AI competition, Google Cloud revenue more than doubled to nearly $31 billion in the third quarter, it reported on Wednesday.
