Key Takeaways:
Companies are deploying internal "AI champion" programs to convert reluctant colleagues, and the strategy is producing measurable results. A Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,749 employees across 14 markets found 74% of frontline workers now use AI tools daily or several times a week, up from 51% in BCG's 2025 report.
"Humans don't like to change. Saying 'Here use this new tool' is scary to people," said Howard Glazer, co-head of global private-equity transactions at Ropes & Gray and the firm's head of practice AI. Glazer, one of roughly 60 champions at the law firm, said one-on-one conversations are far more effective than group training sessions, where "everyone would just smile and nod."
Citigroup has scaled its champion and accelerator program to more than 4,000 participants, split between senior-level executives and employees at various levels. Adoption of Citi Stylus Workspaces, the bank's most broadly available internal AI tool, rose from single-digit percentages in late 2024 to more than 80% as of mid-2026, a jump the company credits in part to the program. At Ropes & Gray, the results are similarly stark: two years ago, 32 users sent a few hundred prompts monthly to legal AI product Harvey. Today, nearly 2,200 of the firm's roughly 3,000 employees generate over 282,000 prompts each month, with each user three times more active than a year ago.
The Champion Model Works Because It's Personal
The most effective champions are not the most technical people, according to executives running these programs. Mars Snacking Chief Technology Officer Ramesh Kollepara, who started a champions program two years ago while at Kellanova, said the ideal candidate has innate curiosity and can translate between business needs and technical capabilities. The program has expanded since Mars acquired Kellanova last year and now includes 500 participants. "Champions are the ones who socialize the broader potential of AI," Kollepara said.
At Citigroup, Josh Goldsmith, head of Digital Solutions and Innovation for Internal Audit and an AI champion, said educating colleagues on specific, real-world tasks is what changes minds. He worked on a use case that generated succinct drafts of audit reports using Citi Stylus Workspaces, and selling colleagues on that specific capability "has gone a long way in changing people's minds," he said. The bank's broader AI ambitions are substantial — Chair and Chief Executive Jane Fraser said at Citi's investor day in May that the firm is applying AI across client onboarding, underwriting, virtual wealth advising, cybersecurity and coding.
Why This Matters for Enterprise AI Investors
The champion-driven adoption model addresses what has become the central bottleneck in enterprise AI: getting workers to actually use the tools companies are spending heavily to deploy. For enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, Salesforce and Harvey, the success of these programs directly determines seat expansion, renewal rates and revenue growth. Microsoft's Copilot for Microsoft 365, priced at $30 per user per month, and Salesforce's Einstein GPT both depend on the kind of grassroots adoption that champion programs enable. Citigroup's experience — moving from single-digit to 80% adoption — suggests that when companies invest in peer-led training, usage can scale rapidly. The BCG data showing a 23-percentage-point jump in regular AI usage in one year reinforces that the trend is accelerating, not plateauing.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
