The next generation wants to bet on AI. The founder wants to know what it actually returns.

I was at a BBQ on the weekend and met a 2nd gen family business operator who was slightly exasperated that his father was not adopting AI more fluently into the business.

Neither of them is wrong. They are just speaking different languages. The next generation wants to spend money on AI. The founder wants to know what it actually returns.

Deloitte Private’s 2026 succession work puts numbers under that quiet tension. About 40% of family businesses expect a leadership handover within the next ten years. When researchers asked what next-generation leaders want to push, technology modernisation and artificial intelligence both landed at 42%. In other words, a large share of the people who will soon own the P&L are already thinking about AI as a growth tool, not a side hobby.

KPMG’s Global Family Business Report 2026 adds the awkward second half. Sixty-four percent of family business leaders say they are already deploying AI. More than a third also say they have no formal governance framework around it. So you get adoption without a shared rulebook: tools on desks, experiments in corners, and a founder who is still being asked to approve a budget on faith.

That is not a technology problem. It is a conversation problem.

What the founder is actually asking

Most founders I meet are not anti-AI. They have built the business by noticing when money comes in and when it leaks out, and they are wary of anything that sounds clever without showing up on either side of that ledger.

When their kids push for an AI budget, what they are listening for is simple. Will this help us sell more, serve customers better in a way that shows up in revenue, or take real cost out of how the place runs? Everything else is noise until that is clear. Model names, vendor decks, and “everyone is doing it” do not answer it. A story about one messy process and how the numbers move does.

The shortest pitch that earns a yes

At 3 Peat we keep coming back to the same two questions before anyone spends a dollar on AI:

Will the initiative increase revenues?

Or will the initiative decrease costs?

If neither question has a clear answer yet, the spend is a hope. If one of them does, you have something the business can actually weigh.

Pick the process where the answer is obvious. Maybe quotes sit too long and revenue is stuck in the inbox. Maybe the same two people burn evenings on order-status replies and documentation that never quite leaves the building. Say which of the two questions that process hits, name who will own the trial, and keep a human approving anything that goes to a customer or supplier until the results are boringly reliable.

Closing

Succession already strains trust. The next generation wants to prove they can grow the place; the founder wants to prove it will not be gambled away. An AI story with no revenue or cost line makes that gap wider. An AI trial that answers one of our two questions, in a sandbox with a human still in the loop, makes it smaller. This is not a mandate to wire every system on day one, and it is not a headcount cut dressed up as modernisation. It is a contained bet the whole table can read.

If you want help turning one painful process into a trial that answers those two questions, you know where we are.

3peat.ai

Sources

Deloitte Private, Family Business Succession Planning and the Next Generation, 2026: https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/global-report-reveals-succession-preparedness-gaps.html

KPMG Global Family Business Report 2026: https://kpmg.com/kw/en/media/2026/07/kpmg-launches-global-family-business-report-2026.html