Artificial intelligence has moved beyond experimentation to become a strategic priority for investor relations (IR) teams. According to Nasdaq’s 7th Annual Global IR Issuer Pulse survey, 51% of IR professionals have now embedded AI into their processes — up from 30% in 2024 and less than 10% in 2023. That pace of adoption signals a meaningful shift in mindset across the profession.
The shift was a central theme during Nasdaq’s 2026 Insight Forum fireside chat, “AI and the Next Era of Technology.” Nasdaq leaders Michael Bartels, Bill Dague, and Christopher Anselmo discussed how AI is reshaping IR workflows, with Anselmo noting, “It’s not if we should do AI, but how.”
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Where AI Is Delivering Immediate Value
As the conversation shifts from whether to use AI to how to use it effectively, the technology is being evaluated as a practical way to create capacity, sharpen decision-making, and improve execution. Dague framed AI’s value in practical terms: “It’s not just about doing a few things better, it’s about changing the economics on whole projects.” For lean IR teams, that framing captures the real appeal — AI can maximize workflows that previously felt too manual, repetitive, or resource-intensive to prioritize.
The Pulse survey found that AI is already delivering value in several core IR workflows. The most common use cases include:
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- Summarizing peer and market events (81%) — including transcripts, research, and news.
- Earnings preparation (70%) — including scripts and Q&A support.
- Internal management reporting (36%) — streamlining updates across leadership and internal stakeholders.
Anselmo underscored this practical value: “We’re seeing a lot of users who are using databases to understand historically how they answer various questions, how they are talking about topics, both for consistency as well as to decrease time.” In other words, one of AI’s earliest benefits in IR is not just automation — it is stronger institutional memory and faster access to the right message at the right time.
How IR Teams Can Use AI More Strategically
With AI implementation becoming more strategic, IR teams can streamline how they absorb and prioritize information so key insights surface more quickly. In practice, AI is helping IR teams use insight more strategically in three areas:
- Smarter investor targeting — informed by ownership trends, capital flows, engagement patterns, and market thematics.
- Better preparation for key stakeholder conversations — drawing on historical messaging and Q&A, peer commentary, industry context, and investor sentiment to sharpen the company’s story.
- More forward-looking scenario analysis — enabling issuers to simulate dynamic inputs to assess how certain strategic decisions may impact market response and optimize messaging.
Looking ahead, the Pulse survey findings suggest strategic momentum is building. 72% of respondents said AI and technology advancement could provide meaningful benefits in 2026, and 32% of the most innovative IR efforts already implemented or planned for 2026 were AI-related, including investor engagement hubs, custom GPTs, and AI-driven sentiment scoring.
How to Implement AI Into IR Workflows With Confidence
As quickly as AI adoption is rising, trust remains the defining implementation roadblock. The Pulse survey findings indicate that data privacy and security concerns are the top barrier at 22%, followed by limited understanding at 15%, with resource constraints and accuracy concerns close behind.
Dague offered a useful framework for responsible implementation: “When you think about engaging with AI services, you want to think about it like it’s a new employee.” He added, “Any time you can explain something with words to teach someone how to do something, that’s an opportunity for AI,” and stressed that the feedback loop is critically important.
In practice, that means teams should focus on a few basics:
- Clear training and instruction — so outputs reflect the company’s language, priorities, and standards.
- Strong review and feedback loops — so the technology improves over time and remains reliable in a market-facing workflow.
- Practical governance — including vendor diligence around data hosting, model training, retention policies, and certifications such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001.
For IR teams, those fundamentals turn AI from an interesting tool into a usable one. As adoption accelerates, the advantage will likely go to teams that can move beyond isolated use cases and embed AI into trusted, repeatable workflows. That is especially true in a market-facing function, where efficiency gains only matter if they are matched by consistency, transparency, and confidence in the output.
Conclusion
The data is clear: AI adoption in IR is no longer optional — it is becoming a competitive necessity. The teams that invest in clear training, strong governance, and strategic use cases will be best positioned to turn AI into a durable advantage. Nasdaq’s IR Intelligence platform, with AI-powered features in Nasdaq IR Insight, demonstrates how enterprise-grade AI can be seamlessly embedded into existing IR workflows, designed with solid security and transparency in mind.
FAQs
Q1: What percentage of IR teams are using AI in 2026?
According to Nasdaq’s 7th Annual Global IR Issuer Pulse survey, 51% of IR professionals have embedded AI into their processes, up from 30% in 2024.
Q2: What are the most common AI use cases in investor relations?
The top use cases include summarizing peer and market events (81%), earnings preparation (70%), and internal management reporting (36%).
Q3: What are the main barriers to AI adoption in IR?
Data privacy and security concerns are the top barrier (22%), followed by limited understanding (15%), resource constraints, and accuracy concerns.
