As AI reshapes the business landscape, CIOs face a pivotal moment: Their roles are expanding, shifting and, in some cases, being redefined entirely. Five years from now, CIOs may be looking at a radically different landscape thanks to these technologies. Here’s how AI is redefining the role of the CIO and the key responsibilities CIOs are likely to take on in the years ahead.
Move from Human to Agentic Workforce Management
CIOs have always played a key role in driving organizational and cultural change, especially when it comes to helping employees adapt to new technologies. With AI agents embedded in the workforce, CIOs may face a dual challenge: helping employees work alongside intelligent agents while making sure those agents are designed and governed to collaborate effectively with humans.
Only 17% of CIOs surveyed are doing this today, and 69% expect to do so by 2030, according to recent Gartner surveys.
CIOs will begin leading or co-leading workforce planning with chief human resources officers (CHROs) and other business function leaders to set roles and responsibilities, onboarding agents, and managing their performance.
They’ll be responsible for building a hybrid, “human-agentic” culture where employees navigate new questions such as “What is the agent’s role on my team?” or “How do I raise concerns about the agent?” They’ll also begin navigating and even creating new models for semi-autonomous employees, including legal, ethical and security frameworks.
Act as Chief Information and Product Officers
CIOs are increasingly taking on more technology responsibilities beyond enabling the business (e.g., customer-facing initiatives) or even nontechnology responsibilities (e.g., ESG efforts). Because of this, they’re playing a bigger role in shaping business strategy, not just enabling it.
In this expanded role, CIOs will be accountable for not only cost and efficiency-focused metrics, but also for top-line metrics. They will manage the brand, customer and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Some will even take full ownership of these outcomes.
Gartner research shows that 79% of CIOs believe that, in five years, they will likely own product life cycles, from ideation to market delivery, and will be focused on driving revenue through platforms, data and AI-enabled services. They’ll be responsible for collaborating with new stakeholders, such as investor relations, market research or venture capital. Customer experience and acquisition will regularly be top of mind.
Manage the AI portfolio for Top-line Growth
CIOs have always managed IT portfolios, and that won’t change. They strategically align IT investments with business goals and ensure cybersecure management of infrastructure, architecture, applications, data and other core IT domains.
But many CIOs now expect to take on a new kind of responsibility: managing the enterprise’s AI portfolio. This is a different discipline altogether, shifting the focus from cost and operations to top-line growth, product and service innovation, as well as AI-specific practices and outcomes. Indeed, 90% of CIOs reported they either own or will own the enterprise AI portfolio within five years.
They will be responsible for managing the enterprise AI portfolio, the ethics of said portfolio, and beginning to measure ROI in terms of the new outcomes AI enables, such as knowledge, foresight and innovation. This will be enabled by new teams and roles within the IT department, like AI ethicists and AI asset managers.
What CIOs May Stop Doing: Building and Deploying Most AI
Before AI, CIOs and their teams led enterprise technology decisions, from vendor selection to system design and deployment. Today, 85% of CIOs report that IT primarily owns the talent required to deploy AI. However, within five years, that number drops to just 53%.
With AI guardrails and decentralized governance models, AI can guide nontechnical leaders in evaluating and deploying AI tools without the CIO losing control. This requires widespread AI literacy in the enterprise. CIOs will lead enterprise AI learning and development efforts focused on teaching and transferring IT’s technical skills so the business can evaluate, build and deploy AI.
The CIO will become more like urban planners, designing their AI “city” while others build it, allowing federated innovation. Naturally, IT would limit its support to only the most complex, high-stakes solutions for production.
Eventually, IT and business units will formally merge; for example, CIOs may report to business unit CEOs (or vice versa).
Core Responsibilities Remain, But Done Differently
While much of the CIO role is evolving, some core responsibilities will remain over the next five years. What is changing is how CIOs will carry them out. They’ll still manage enterprise technology budgets, procurement and infrastructure, but AI will reshape the nature of these tasks
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Budgeting: From Manager to Orchestrator. Instead of managing fixed annual IT budgets, CIOs will oversee more real-time, AI-driven IT budgets. They’ll operate more like conductors than gatekeepers. AI may even act as a budget stakeholder by proposing investments, backing them with predictive ROI and competing for funding. CIOs will need to balance human and machine priorities in a continuous multi-agent negotiation.
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Procurement: From Buyer to Ecosystem Curator. CIOs will shift from buying all-in-one platforms to assembling flexible, composable architectures. That means prioritizing interoperability and agility over long-term vendor lock-in. AI-powered procurement agents will scan markets, augment contract negotiation and execute purchases. CIOs will oversee this intelligent marketplace, ensuring governance, alignment and strategic fit.
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Infrastructure: From Operator to Ethical Architect. Infrastructure will increasingly manage itself, tuning performance, reallocating resources and adapting in real time. CIOs will focus on shaping infrastructure that’s more autonomous, adaptive and aligned with business goals. CIOs will be responsible for ensuring that systems can respond to emotional context, prioritize fairness and embed ethical safeguards especially in sensitive areas like legal and customer-facing uses.
Forward Thinking
Over the next five years, CIOs will shift from traditional control points to leading human-agentic workforce planning, driving product and revenue outcomes, and managing enterprise AI portfolios. As business units gain more autonomy with AI, CIOs will focus on transforming core responsibilities: overseeing adaptive, AI-driven systems, intelligent procurement, and ethical, autonomous infrastructure aligned with human values.
