This year, over 350 Chief Data & Analytics Officers (CDAOs) participated in our annual Leadership Perspective Survey, sharing their top priorities, challenges, and investment areas for 2025. This data, along with discussions with our CDAO community members, informs our content development for community gatherings and events throughout the year, ensuring our agendas focus only on the most critical topics for our members.
In 2025, CDAOs continue to prioritize artificial intelligence, data strategy, and data governance, which are shaping their investment decisions for the coming year. Below, we are sharing key findings from our survey:
Operating Budgets Remain Steady
More than half of CDAOs (53%) report that their operating budgets remain unchanged from last year. Thirty-one percent have seen an increase in their budget from 2024, while only 16% are experiencing a decrease.
Planned Spending Remains the Same
Similar to their operating budgets, 50% of CDAOs indicated that their planned technology and services spending will remain unchanged this year. Thirty-six percent report an increase in technology and services spending, while only 14% plan to decrease their spending in 2025.
Investing in AI & Data Governance
Spending on artificial intelligence solutions has surged, with 65% of data and analytics executives reporting planned AI investments in 2025, up from 48% last year. Additionally, 44% of CDAOs report investments in data governance, 41% in data quality, 36% in databases/data warehouses/data lakes, and 34% in machine learning.
AI is CDAOs’ Top Priority
For the second consecutive year, CDAOs report that AI (both traditional and generative) is their top functional priority for 2025. Data and analytics strategy, data governance, and fostering a data-driven culture remain important for data leaders. This year, data democratization and self-service have re-entered the list after falling off in 2024.
Topics of Interest
In addition to their key focus areas, CDAOs shared the topics they most want to discuss with peers and sponsors at upcoming events. Here are the trending topics for CDAOs in 2025:
- D&A Leadership & Influence
- Data as a Product/Service
- CDAO Role Evolution
- Measuring Business Outcomes/Performance
- Innovating for the Future
To learn more about sponsoring Gartner C-level Communities and events and how our proprietary data can help your message resonate with C-level decision makers, contact us.
Based on 350+ CDAO responses from Gartner C-level Communities’ proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey, March 2025.
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