The Real Reason AI Pilots Are Stalling and What Banks Can Do About It

A recent MIT report covered by Forbes paints a sobering picture: 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots are failing. That means most organizations are sinking time and money into AI projects that never make it past the starting line.

Why? It’s not because the technology doesn’t work. MIT found the real issue is how AI is being applied:

• Generic tools stall out. Flexible models like ChatGPT are great for individuals but can’t adapt to the unique processes of regulated industries.
  
  
• Budgets go to the wrong places. Many companies spend heavily on sales and marketing tools, while the biggest ROI lies in back-office automation and operational efficiency.
  
  
• Going solo backfires. MIT reports that purchased, specialized solutions succeed twice as often as internal builds.
  
  

In other words—AI isn’t failing. The approach is.

Where Hapax Fits In

At Hapax, we’ve seen this story before. Banks and credit unions don’t need “AI experiments.” They need a purpose-built platform that works from day one and grows with them over time. Here’s how Hapax turns those MIT findings on their head:

• Purpose-built for financial services. Unlike generic tools, Hapax is designed specifically for banks and credit unions—trained on your own policies and workflows, not industry-wide guesswork.
  
  
• Secure and compliant. Shadow AI may be creeping into other enterprises, but Hapax keeps your data locked down in a secure, single-tenant environment.
  
  
• Operational ROI first. Our customers see the biggest gains in compliance and operational efficiency—not just point solutions like customer service chat bots.
  
  
• Agentic intelligence. MIT points to agentic AI as the “next phase” of enterprise adoption. Hapax is already there—delivering AI that can learn and act independently within guardrails.
  
  

The Takeaway

The MIT report makes one thing clear: banks and credit unions can't afford to chase disconnected AI pilots that stall out. Instead, they need a test-and-learn approach to discover where the real value lies for their institution. But testing only works if you have the right foundation — flexibility and infrastructure that let you explore use cases without the cost and disruption of switching tools or starting over.

Hapax provides that foundation. With a purpose-built platform, your institution can move nimbly between use cases, vet them thoroughly, and scale what works—securely, compliantly, and without the 95% failure rate.

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