Snowflake Research Reveals More ANZ Organisations Investing Heavily In Gen AI Than The Global Average

• 32% of ANZ organisations are putting more than a quarter of their tech budget for the next 12 months toward generative AI (versus 25% globally).
• ANZ respondents have seen a 44% return on their AI investments. Compared to the global average, organisations in ANZ were more likely to cite enhancing customer satisfaction as a key goal for their AI initiatives (53% versus 43%), and less likely to prioritise internal-facing projects (47% versus 55%).
• The cost of staffing for generative AI in ANZ was more often higher than expected (63% in ANZ versus 48% globally).

Sydney, Australia – April 16, 2025 – Organisations across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) are investing in generative AI at higher rates than their global counterparts, but more often experience cost blow outs when it comes to staffing these initiatives.

This is according to findings from the “Radical ROI of Generative AI,” report from Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the AI Data Cloud company. The global research report, undertaken in collaboration with Enterprise Strategy Group, surveyed 1,900 business and IT leaders across nine different countries — all of whom are actively using generative AI for one or more use cases.

The report found ANZ’s early AI adopters were more likely than the global average to report their efforts with gen AI were enabling the organisation to make better, faster decisions (91% versus 84% globally), and reported a slightly higher than average ROI attributed to gen AI spend (a 44% return versus 41% on average globally).

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“Local organisations are funding gen AI at a rate above the global average which bodes well for the development and growth of AI in our region,” said Theo Hourmouzis, Senior Regional Vice President, Australia and New Zealand and ASEAN, Snowflake. “While there is a clear appetite and drive to be ahead of the AI curve, there are hurdles that local business and IT leaders are at pains to overcome – the two biggest challenges being talent and data.”

Driving Better Customer Experience Through AI Investments

The report found that 32% of ANZ organisations are putting more than a quarter of their tech budget for the next 12 months toward gen AI (versus 25% globally), with enhancing the customer experience emerging as the key outcome.

Compared to the global average, ANZ organisations more often cite enhancing customer satisfaction, delivering personalised experiences, and improving customer engagement as key goals of their AI strategy (53% versus a 43% global average).

Given that focus, it’s no surprise that ANZ respondents were more likely to emphasise gen AI projects for end customers (53% versus 44%) and less weighted toward employee-facing efforts (47% versus 55%).

“Improving the customer experience is where local organisations are focusing their gen AI strategy and for many businesses this is providing clear benefits already,” said Hourmouzis. “Major local customers across industries like retail, banking, aviation, and the public sector are using Snowflake to make better decisions quicker, and are already reaping the benefits of their customer-focused strategies.”

Not All Smooth Sailing Despite Overall Satisfaction

Respondents in ANZ more often reported certain challenges in their gen AI initiatives than the global average.

• Many competing priorities: Respondents in ANZ more often struggled to identify the right use cases to pursue (71% versus 54%).
• Data obstacles: Compared to the global average, local organisations more often cited a lack of data diversity/range (56% versus 42%), time consuming data management tasks (62% versus 55%) and data preparation (59% versus 51%) as difficult areas. Further, ANZ organisations more often say it’s hard to break down data silos (76% versus 64%).
• Unexpected costs: The majority (84%) of ANZ organisations say half or more of their gen AI use cases have cost more than expected to get into production, compared to the global average of 78%.

On this final point, one of the main causes of unexpected costs appears to be the human element. The report found that the cost of staffing up for gen AI was more often higher than expected in ANZ (63%) than the global average (48%).

“It's important to note that the industry is still in the relative infancy of AI adoption,” said Hourmouzis. “These challenges, including the talent issue, will look like a drop in the ocean 10, 20 and 30 years from now once AI evolves into a normal, everyday part of our business lives.”

“The first step for local businesses is to address the data issue. Without an effective data strategy, they will struggle to have an effective AI strategy. Fix the foundations, and the rest will fall into place.”

There is a significant opportunity for businesses to overcome these challenges and unlock the full potential of their data for more accurate, relevant, and impactful AI outcomes with a unified data platform.

Learn More:

• Read the full research report, “Radical ROI of Generative AI,” and double click into the findings in this blog post.
• See how Snowflake is providing thousands of users with a robust platform that is easy to use, connected, and trusted in order to support both current and future AI needs in this blog post.
• Learn more about how global organizations can get started with AI data agents today and define an ROI framework to measure business impact in this A Practical Guide to AI Agents ebook.

Methodology
Researchers from Enterprise Strategy Group identified, and conducted deeper research between Nov. 21, 2024, to Jan. 10, 2025, with early adopter organisations — those already augmenting and executing business processes in production, using commercial and open-source models rather than consumer-grade, subscription software such as ChatGPT. Of 3,324 respondents, 1,900 (57%) said they are using commercial or open source generative AI solutions.

About Snowflake
Snowflake makes enterprise AI easy, efficient and trusted. More than 11,000 companies around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to share data, build applications, and power their business with AI. The era of enterprise AI is here.

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