Revolut Business: Romanian companies prioritize investment in basic IT over AI in 2026
New research by Revolut Business among 150 Romanian business decision-makers (CEOs, CFOs, and COOs) revealed that local companies prefer to invest their money in modernizing their IT infrastructure and automating outdated systems rather than in artificial intelligence.
When asked where the largest budget increase will go this year, ‘modernizing IT infrastructure and cloud migration’ takes the top spot (19%), followed by scaling up sales and marketing for market share (16%) and hiring new talent to expand the team (12%). ‘Building out AI capabilities’ comes in sixth place in the ranking with only 10%.
Only 15% of surveyed executives view IT infrastructure as the biggest obstacle to AI adoption. Leadership buy‑in and clear business integration strategy (31%) and change management programmes for employees (21%) are also hurdles. Furthermore, a quarter of corporates struggle primarily with internal buy-in, while one in five medium-sized companies simply lacks the technical talent.
“Romanian companies seem to want to repair the past first, before looking ahead and jumping fully onto the AI bandwagon,” the report noted.
When asked which process is the most dated and needs immediate replacement, one quarter of respondents (24%) cite ‘manual data entry and reporting’. Long‑winded HR onboarding processes (22%) are also a thorn in the side, especially for small-sized companies (32%).
Although the general trend points towards consolidation, the research exposes an interesting discrepancy between the different board members. CEOs prefer to invest in talent retention (15%), while only 5% of CFOs have a similar priority. Instead, the latter want to invest in innovation (23%) more than CEOs (13%).
“This exposes a strategic dilemma: the CFO chases expansion and innovation, while the CEO prioritises internal stability and retention in an overheated labour market,” the Revolut study argued.
“Romanian companies are rightly pragmatic: you don’t build a skyscraper on a weak foundation. But modernizing doesn’t have to mean spending years on IT projects. Many of the old-school frustrations highlighted in the research, such as time-consuming administration and unnecessarily complex approvals, can be solved immediately with the current generation of smart financial tools,” said Iulian Boia, Sales Manager at Revolut Business.
(Photo source: Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com)
