Zen Ex Machina: AI Ownership, the C-Suite, and Larridin as Part of the Solution

Larridin research was cited in an article on the website for Zen Ex Machina, an independent Australian firm advising on AI. The article asks: which of the “Cs” in the “C-suite” owns AI?

Research shows that many C-suite executives each believe they are the owner of AI:

• The CIO reads AI as a technology decision.
• The CDO reads AI as data governance under a new name.
• The CFO reads AI as an investment and budgeting question. 
• Business unit heads read AI as an operations question that only the accountable line executive can answer.

If you’re having a slow day, ask this question in your company, and watch the sparks fly. Because “AI” is a concept, with many meanings to different people. What everyone in the surveys is missing is data about how AI tools are actually used in their company.

In the article, three points stand out.

AI ownership isn’t absent; it’s contested. Survey work from Pearl Meyer found that 90% of board directors say the C-suite owns AI, but inside the C-suite the answer splits several ways, with no single type of answer commanding a majority. The same decision has been made in several different rooms, each claiming ownership, and the enterprise has no forum in which those rooms compare notes.

The adjudicating layer has never been designed. The article cites Larridin research, reported by BusinessWire in February 2026, finding that 58% of executives report no clear ownership of AI inside the enterprise, and 75% still lack a fully implemented AI governance program. The enterprise-level accountability that would resolve the functional claims does not exist, because it’s no one's job to build it.

Resolving this is the CEO's task, not a decision to be made by individual C-suite members. Picking a single winner among the different claims would overreach one executive's accountability and force the others to defer on questions they still legitimately own.

If your executive team has multiple answers to the board's question, or if it’s like 58% of the executives in Larridin's study and has no answer it can defend, it’s worth your time to review the article.

But, for Larridin customers, the problem largely solves itself. “AI” is a concept. Larridin customers have data about how AI tools are used in every team in the company. Which tools, how often, and as part of what workflows.

This data makes it far easier to divide up the pie, to optimize business processes around AI—and to understand that the big-picture questions rest with the CEO.

Read the full article: Your C-suite has four answers to who owns AI and no process to resolve it