Business and technology leaders are entering the 2027 fiscal planning cycle with renewed confidence, according to the latest research from Forrester.

The market research firm’s 2027 Budget Planning Guides reveal that more than four in five leaders expect their overall budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with a quarter of respondents anticipating growth of 10% or more.

Optimism is widespread across corporate functions. Forrester’s global survey of more than 2,600 decision-makers highlights that 82% of technology executives and 91% of marketing leaders project budget expansions. Furthermore, 55% of customer experience leaders expect spending growth of at least 5%, a significant jump from 39% last year.

However, analysts warn that this financial surge is not solely born out of economic optimism. A structural revolution in software licensing is quietly forcing enterprises to fork out more cash. Major software vendors are aggressively shifting away from traditional per-seat licensing in favor of usage-based token or credit pricing models.

This transition introduces complex variables into corporate balance sheets — including model selection, context size, output length, and agent operating time — making monthly tech outgoings increasingly unpredictable. High-profile shifts underscore the trend: GitHub recently migrated its Copilot plans to usage-based billing, OpenAI expanded its pay-as-you-go Codex seats, and Anthropic altered subscriptions due to highly volatile demand.

“Business leaders are no longer planning for a return to stability – they’re planning for a future where volatility is a constant,” noted Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester.

Consequently, Forrester cautions that simply throwing capital at artificial intelligence without structural modernization will only accelerate technical debt and fragmented data. To survive the shift, the firm recommends targeting investments into two critical areas: building machine-readable context to guide AI agents through complex business systems, and investing in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to secure brand visibility in AI-generated search results.

Conversely, the guides advise leaders to scale back funding for general tech debt and cut ungoverned AI pilots that lack a clear path to execution. For future growth, Forrester points to strategic experimentation with synthetic data to accelerate insights, alongside deploying AI agents to optimize marketing operations and customer-facing interactions.

Ultimately, navigating the 2027 tech landscape will require surgical precision rather than raw spending power. As Leaver concluded, “The organizations that outperform in 2027 won’t be those that spend the most on AI. They’ll be the ones that invest in the foundations that make AI effective.”