Cybersecurity, GenAI to lead spending growth in Gartner's 2025 CIO Agenda

87% of CIOs plan to increase spending on cybersecurity and generative AI (GenAI) in 2025, and 84% say they are increasing their AI budgets for next year.

CIOs increasingly play an integral role in driving new organic revenue growth while continually evaluating, piloting, and adopting new technologies. Gartner's two recent reports on CIOs' agendas for 2025 reflect how GenAI is now considered a must-have productivity tool by the majority of senior IT leaders interviewed. 2025 CIO Agenda: Benchmark Top Priorities and Technology Plans Across Industries and 2025 CIO and Technology Executive Agenda: Grow The Digital Vanguard forecast where CIOs will be investing in 2025 and why.

CIOs also told Gartner that cybersecurity is now considered table stakes, especially in crucial infrastructure industries. Gartner's recent survey of over 3,000 CIOs globally found that 94% of CIOs leading utilities consider cybersecurity a non-negotiable investment to protect their production assets.

The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community is an excellent read. It shows just how at risk and how targeted U.S. infrastructure is by cyberattacks from unfriendly nation-states.

Three technologies will dominate 2025 CIO budgets

Reflecting the growing need for enterprises to gain more significant insights into risks, predict cyberattacks, and deter them once they're launched, cybersecurity spending increases will dominate CIO budgets in 2025.

Gen AI and AI are the two other technologies that are predicted to see the most significant spending gains next year.

?Where technology funding is changing the fastest

CIOs plan to continue accelerating their investments in foundational technologies that deliver value by aggregating, interpreting, and predicting outcomes based on large-scale data sets.

Over the last three months, more partnerships have been announced between cybersecurity, cloud, CRM, ERP, and supply chain vendors than in years. Core to these partnerships are open APIs and the goal of enriching models for shared customers. The following graphic profiles the changes in technology funding from 2024 to 2025.

Enterprises are accelerating emerging tech deployments

Enterprises are accelerating their adoption of new technologies, with AI leading the way. 43% of enterprises have already deployed AI, and 30% plan to deploy it within 12 months, underscoring its growing importance.

Gen AI is close behind, with 37% deployed and 35% of CIOs saying their teams are planning for near-term deployment. Low-code/no-code platforms also show strong adoption at 42%, while industry cloud platforms (35%) and distributed cloud (31%) are also gaining traction. Advanced technologies like privacy-enhancing computation (12%) and quantum computing (4%) remain in the early adoption phase, signaling long-term potential.