In 2025, enterprises are striving to maximize the impact of their AI investments, with Chief Data and Analytics Officers (CDAOs) playing a pivotal role in establishing the foundation required for an AI-ready organization. What are the critical focus areas for CDAOs in 2025 to achieve this goal?
Gartner C-level Communities’ annual CDAO Leadership Perspective Survey gathered insights from 350 CDAO community members about their top priorities, challenges, and investment areas for the year ahead. Here’s what they reported.
CDAOs’ Top Priority for 2025: Generative & Traditional AI
The top priorities for CDAOs in 2025 remain largely consistent with the previous year, with generative and traditional AI maintaining its position as the foremost priority for the second consecutive year. Other key areas include data and analytics strategy, data governance, and data-driven culture and fluency. Notably, trust and reliability in data has been replaced by data democratization and self-service as top priorities.
CDAOs’ Top Enterprise Priority: Driving Growth
In 2025, CDAOs have shifted their enterprise priorities to focus on driving growth, increasing operational efficiencies and productivity, and increasing revenue. New priorities this year include cost optimization and improving customer experience, while innovating for competitive advantage and digital business acceleration have fallen off the list.
Budgets Have Primarily Remained Flat
Fifty percent of CDAOs report that their technology budgets have remained unchanged compared to 2024. Meanwhile, 36% have experienced budget increases, and 14% report a decrease from last year.
CDAOs are Investing in AI
This year, the percent of data leaders investing in AI has surged to 65%. Data governance and data quality are also significant spending areas, with 44% and 41% of CDAOs investing in these areas, respectively. Approximately one-third of CDAOs are allocating resources to databases, data warehouses, data lakes, and machine learning.
Each year, we conduct our proprietary CDAO Leadership Perspective Survey with members of our global C-Level communities to capture their top priorities, challenges, and investments for the coming year. These insights allow us to identify trends and tailor community programs and discussion topics to the real-time needs of CDAOs.
If you are a data and analytics leader looking to connect with peers on these mission critical priorities, apply now to join a local CDAO community. If you are already a member, sign in to our app to see upcoming events in your community.
350+ CDAO responses to Gartner C-level Communities’ proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey, March 2025.
By CDAOs, For CDAOs™
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