Who Owns AI In The C-Suite?

This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Nada Usina is CEO & Co-Founder of NU Advisory Partners.

getty​AI spending is skyrocketing and employees in nearly every industry and role are being asked to implement it. Yet many companies still haven’t decided who is ultimately responsible for making it work. The technology touches nearly every part of the business, which means ownership can quickly become muddled across the CEO, technology, finance, legal, HR and operations.​

I’ve spent decades in leadership positions at pivotal moments where digital transformation and the mobile movement completely upended industries. I held executive roles at Nokia, broadcast.com and Yahoo! during major technological shifts that forced companies to reconsider how responsibilities were divided and who owned what. Now AI is forcing the C-Suite to examine talent and ownership in a similar manner. ​

During the dot-com era, companies rushed to go online, assigning parts of building digital businesses and e-commerce channels to existing executives. This raised key questions about how to digitize a business. Did the task belong to the CTO because engineers had to build the infrastructure? Was it the CMO’s responsibility because it changed how companies reached customers? Did it belong to the revenue leader because companies could now sell directly to consumers?​

Looking back at the winners and losers of that era, I can say there was no universal answer. The structure depended on the company, its industry and what it expected digital to accomplish. Consumer businesses moved first. Financial services and healthcare followed as they worked through added complexity and regulation. Industrial companies generally took longer. The executives that succeeded were the most keen to understand the technology and how it applied to their specific business.​

Within ten years, everyone had embraced digital, and mobile was the new technology the C-suite had to navigate. Yet companies didn’t rush to appoint Chief Mobile Officers; instead, mobile altered how technology, product, sales and operations leaders did their jobs. The impact looked different at a bank than at an HVAC company, but neither could treat mobile as a side project.​

We’re now watching the same organizational questions emerge around AI at a much faster pace. Companies are creating Chief AI Officer roles and expanding the mandates of technology and data executives, yet many still lack clarity about who truly owns the outcome. How AI impacts your bottom line and customers matters more than which title is tasked with implementation.​

AI touches too many aspects of an organization for it to sit neatly in one department. It can change the product, customer experience, cost structure, workforce, flow of information and speed of decision-making. Given the widespread impact and strategy considerations, it makes sense that all CEOs need to own at least some aspect of AI. This doesn’t mean the CEO selects LLM models, but they should define what the company expects AI to accomplish and ensure the organization is prepared to change around it.​

In the executive search industry, our clients increasingly recognize that the strongest AI candidates may not have AI in their titles. They look instead for leaders who have driven operational change, worked across data and technology and turned AI strategy into measurable results.​

AI has already fundamentally impacted every C-Suite role. CTOs and CIOs must connect infrastructure and data decisions with revenue, productivity and customer value. They need enough commercial judgment to determine which business problems deserve an AI solution and enough technical depth to recognize when a proposed solution will not work.​

CFOs are being asked to evaluate investments whose returns may appear across several departments. A faster product launch, improved pricing decision or shorter customer-service process may matter more than a simple reduction in headcount. CFOs must determine whether AI has created lasting operating leverage or shifted costs into another part of the business.​

Legal and HR execs are dealing with intellectual property, privacy, data use, regulatory exposure and people decisions while the technology develops faster than many policies governing it. They must protect the company without turning reasonable caution into organizational paralysis. Product, revenue and operating leaders have to translate the technology into something customers will use and the business can sustain.​

These responsibilities overlap, which makes cross-functional judgment increasingly important. The strongest AI-era executives will understand where their authority begins, where it ends and when a decision requires another leader at the table.​

The first step to determine where AI lands in the C-Suite is to ask questions about the outcomes the company expects. What will AI change for the customer? Who owns the data and implementation? Which executive is accountable when adoption stalls? Do you truly need to hire for new capabilities or can they be developed?​

Those answers will help determine how AI fits into executive ownership and will shape mandates for existing executives. Digital and mobile eventually became part of nearly every C-Suite’s job. AI is moving in the same direction, only faster.​

The companies that navigate this shift well will have clarity at the top. Their executives will understand what they own, where they must collaborate and how their roles need to evolve. Most importantly, their CEOs will treat AI as an organizational transformation rather than a technology initiative with a new title attached.

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