Australia leads APAC on AI ROI: Notion

Australian businesses are leading the Asia–Pacific region in terms of achieving returns on their AI investment, but executives’ enthusiasm for AI is vastly outpacing employee sentiment.

These are among the findings of Notion’s Global AI Transformation Study 2026. The report found that Australia tops the region for tracking AI’s measurable business impact at 76%, just ahead of Singapore (75%) and well ahead of Japan (55%). But the certainty on AI’s impact on the bottom line masks the fact that Australia also has the widest gap in the region between the proportion of decision-makers feeling highly confident in their company’s AI capabilities (61%), and the percentage of knowledge workers who agree (26%).

Region-wide, the report found that 52% of APAC organisations admit to investing in AI faster than their employees can adopt it. Trust is a major hurdle to employee adoption, with 77% of APAC knowledge workers stating that they would use AI more if they could trust it not to make mistakes on important work.

On the positive side, Australia is ahead of the global benchmark in terms of the percentage of organisations at level 3 or 4 of Notion’s AI Transformation Model. With 15.2% of organisations at these stages, Australia trails only South Korea (15.7%) and Singapore (21%) across the APAC region.

The report broadly mirrors the findings of research from the Tech Council Australia and Datacom. The joint 2026 Tech Leaders Survey found that while 78% of local technology executives identify AI as their defining focus, only 7% believe the country has the capacity to meet future AI demand.

Distribution of companies across AI maturity levels.

To help address the AI confidence gap, Notion has appointed Tom Karemacher as its General Manager for Australia and New Zealand, tasked with driving the company’s growth across the two markets while helping local businesses scale the AI maturity ladder.

“Demanding AI ROI is easy. Building the workforce trust required to deliver it is where Australian companies are stalling,” he commented. “Notion’s strong local growth shows that Aussie teams are ready for true human–AI collaboration. My priority is to empower organisations of all sizes to move up the AI maturity ladder. By creating a collaborative AI-first workspace where humans and AI agents operate together, we give teams the context and accuracy they need to achieve meaningful AI ROI, ensuring no teams are left behind.”

According to Notion, the most mature organisations are setting clear metrics, establishing governance around AI outputs and giving employees practical guidelines for responsible use.

Top image credit: iStock.com/Techa Tungateja