--- title: The 2026 State of Competitive Intelligence — Crayon description: The industry's longest-running competitive intelligence report — what separates the programs winning more deals from everyone else. Five years of trend data, with AI as the new dividing line. --- Crayon · 9th Edition · The Industry's Longest-Running CI Report # The 2026 State of *Competitive Intelligence* Six chapters on how the best programs turn competitive intelligence into revenue, plus a 1-minute grader to benchmark your own. - What separates the programs winning more deals from everyone else - The practices most correlated with revenue, win rate, and adoption - Your personalized CI maturity grade 2×the revenue impact 82% of teams running **AI agents in their sales motion** achieve revenue impact, versus 42% that don't. That's nearly **2× the rate**. Inside: **16 charts** and **19 findings** across six chapters. 2026 · 9th Edition · The longest-running CI benchmark ### Get the full report Instant access to all six chapters, plus your personalized CI maturity grade. First name Last name Work email Get the report → By submitting, you agree to receive the 2026 State of Competitive Intelligence report and occasional updates from Crayon. We'll never share your information. Something went wrong. Please try again or email us directly. 2026 The 2026 Report · 9th Edition ## Competitive intelligence just had its most consequential year yet. For nearly a decade, this report has tracked how competitive intelligence programs get built, funded, and measured. This year the headline isn't that more teams are doing CI; almost everyone is. It's how far the best programs have pulled away from the rest. Across six chapters we map what separates the teams turning compete into revenue from the teams treating it as a reporting exercise: how they're organized, what they measure, how often they put intel in front of sellers, and how aggressively they've wired in AI. The patterns are remarkably consistent, and almost all of them are choices any team can make. [At a glance](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#favorites) [The big picture](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s1) [Competitive pressure](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s2) [The foundation](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s3) [Delivery](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s4) [AI](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s6) [The blueprint](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s5) [Takeaways](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#playbook) ## The report at a glance One headline finding from each chapter. The fastest way to see what changed this year. Tap any to jump in. [Chapter 1 · The big picture 0% of teams now run a **dedicated CI platform**, nearly double 2022. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s1) [Chapter 2 · Competitive pressure 0% of teams say **more of their deals are competitive** than a year ago. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s2) [Chapter 3 · The foundation 0% have an **executive sponsor in sales**, still the clearest gap to close. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s3) [Chapter 4 · Capture & delivery 0% of teams that **share weekly or faster** achieve revenue impact, vs. 41% who don't. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s4) [Chapter 5 · Put AI to work 0% use **AI to create compete content**, up from just 25% in 2024. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s6) [Chapter 6 · Blueprint for success 0% of teams with **KPIs and an exec sponsor** drive revenue impact, vs. 29% with neither. ](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#s5) 01 The big picture ## Competitive intelligence has gone mainstream, and it's paying off. Across nine editions of this report, no period has matured faster than the last five years: adoption, win rates, and proven revenue impact are all at record highs. The real story now isn't whether teams do CI; it's how wide the gap has grown between the leaders and everyone else, and what, exactly, the leaders are doing differently. Do you have a dedicated CI platform? ### Platform adoption has nearly doubled in five years. Two-thirds of teams now run a dedicated CI platform, up from roughly a third in 2022. The build-vs-buy question is tilting decisively toward buy: rather than stitch compete together from spreadsheets and scattered tools, teams are standing up purpose-built platforms (Crayon among them) that turn it into real, repeatable infrastructure. Teams with a dedicated CI platform · 2022–2026 Has your CI program made a positive impact on revenue? ### CI driving revenue is at an all-time high. The share of teams achieving positive revenue impact has more than doubled since 2022. As programs mature and measurement improves, the business case for compete keeps getting stronger. Teams achieving revenue impact · 2022–2026 How has your competitive win rate changed? ### Half of teams say their competitive win rate is climbing. 49.6% saw their win rate against competitors increase over the past year, versus just 6.3% who saw it fall. Compete programs aren't just busy; they're moving the metric that matters most. Change in competitive win rate · past 12 months 02 Markets are more competitive than ever ## Competition is intensifying, and reps feel underprepared. Every year of this survey, competitive pressure ticks up, and 2026 is no exception. More deals are competitive, most are now head-to-head, yet rep readiness is stuck in the middle. The opportunity isn't tracking more competitors; it's preparing reps better for the ones that matter, which starts with simply measuring how often you go head-to-head. Compared to last year, has the share of competitive deals changed? ### Most teams say competition is rising. 57.5% report that more of their deals are competitive than a year ago; only 16% say it eased. Differentiation is getting harder and the market is getting noisier. Change in share of competitive deals vs. a year ago What share of your deals are competitive, and how ready are reps? ### For most teams, half the pipeline is competitive, but readiness lags. Seven in ten teams say at least half of their sales opportunities are now competitive. Yet asked how prepared their reps are for those deals, the average score is just 6.3 out of 10, a persistent readiness gap that competitive enablement exists to close. 0% of teams say half or more of their deals are competitive 0 average rep readiness, out of 10 How many competitors do you actively track? ### Most teams focus on a manageable competitive set. Nearly 8 in 10 teams actively track 30 competitors or fewer, with the largest group focused on 11–30. Depth over breadth remains the winning posture, especially for younger programs. How many competitors teams actively track 03 Get structured ## The foundation: ownership, KPIs, a platform, and a sponsor. World-class programs aren't complicated, but they are deliberate. A clear owner, real KPIs, a dedicated platform, and an executive sponsor each independently more than double the odds of revenue impact. Most teams are missing at least one, and an exec sponsor is the piece most often missing. If you're starting somewhere, start with KPIs, then go win that sponsor. Which department owns the compete function? ### Marketing owns compete, but it lives or dies on sales alignment. Marketing owns the compete function at 42% of companies, followed by strategy/exec and product. Wherever it sits, the pattern is the same: programs without a clear owner, and without a tie into sales, stall out. Which team owns the compete function Do you have specific KPIs in place? ### Twice as many teams now measure with real KPIs. KPI adoption jumped from 30% in 2022 to 60.5% today, the steepest climb of any maturity indicator this year. And as the blueprint chapter shows, measurement is the single biggest predictor of whether a program proves its value: teams that track KPIs see a rising win rate at 66%, versus 24% of those that don't. Teams tracking specific CI KPIs · 2022–2026 Which KPIs do you use to measure your program? ### Six in ten teams now track KPIs, and win rate leads. Competitive win rate is the most-tracked metric, followed by content usage and influenced revenue. The teams that measure outcomes, not just activity, are the ones that earn budget and prove impact. Most-tracked CI KPIs (among teams that track any) Do you have an executive sponsor in sales? ### Executive sponsorship is the biggest unrealized opportunity. Teams with an exec sponsor are 2.5x more likely to achieve $1M+ in revenue impact and more than double strong sales adoption: 62% see their win rate climb, versus 33% without one. Yet only 56.7% have one, a number that's been essentially flat for years. It's the highest-leverage practice with the lowest adoption. 0% of teams have an executive sponsor in sales, flat and the clearest gap to close “ > I have such enthusiastic executive committee support from my executive that he'll push through any barriers that we run into. Head of Competitive IntelligenceProduct-lifecycle management (PLM) software company 04 Get on a weekly clock ## What you produce matters. How often you deliver it matters more. The best programs blend sources, ship a range of deliverables, and above all keep a relentless cadence. Source breadth and content mix help, but sharing weekly or faster is one of the strongest predictors of adoption and revenue in the whole survey. The move that works: pick one weekly ritual and automate it into the three places sellers already live: the CRM, Slack or Teams, and your enablement tool. What are your top 3 sources of competitive intelligence? ### This year, internal data overtook the competitor’s website. For years, the competitor’s own website was the source teams leaned on most. In 2026 it was overtaken. Group the intel teams already own: knowledge from employees, internal docs, and call recordings (**46% now run a tool like Gong for compete**), and it’s the most-cited source at **54%**, ahead of competitor websites at 48%. Win/loss insights from buyers and sellers rank third at 36%. The competitor website is still the single most-named option, but the center of gravity has shifted to the field intel teams generate themselves. Most-cited sources of competitive intelligence How often do you share CI updates with sales? ### Only about half of teams share intel weekly or faster. Roughly 56% of teams share CI weekly, daily, or in real time, leaving a large group on a monthly-or-slower cadence. As the next finding shows, that gap is expensive. How often teams share CI with sales Which deliverables does your program produce? ### Battlecards still rule, but win/loss and win stories are rising. Battlecards remain the backbone of compete content, but comparison content, competitor profiles, and win/loss reports are all widely produced. Win stories and win/loss reports, both newer additions, already correlate with stronger outcomes. CI deliverables teams produce Does cadence actually change outcomes? ### Weekly rhythm is the lever nobody talks about. Teams that share weekly or faster achieve revenue impact at 79% vs. 41% for monthly-or-slower. The same gap shows up in adoption and win rate. The takeaway is blunt: frequency, not format, is what moves the needle. Revenue impact · weekly+ sharing vs. monthly or slower 05 Put AI to work ## AI moved from writing content to running plays. Using AI to create compete content is now table stakes: 80% of teams already do it. The advantage now belongs to teams putting AI to work in the sales motion: chatbots and agents that prep reps and push intel into live deals, where the biggest outcome gap in the report lives. The way in is small and specific: start one agent use case (meeting prep or deal alerts) inside your CI platform, not as generic prompts against scraped sites. Do you use AI to generate compete content? ### AI for compete content is now mainstream. 80% of teams use AI to generate sales-facing competitive content, up from 61% in 2025 and just 25% in 2024. And it's not a novelty: most of those teams now have AI generating a meaningful share of their content. How much compete content is AI-generated What research and content tasks are teams using AI for? ### Teams use AI for far more than writing. Summarizing content tops the list, but analyzing competitor data, collecting intel, and summarizing win/loss interviews are all common. AI is quietly absorbing the most time-consuming parts of the CI workflow. Getting that intel in front of reps is increasingly an agent's job. More on that next. What teams use AI for Are AI agents used by your sales team? ### Agents are arriving fast, and they're among the widest gaps in the report. Half of teams now run AI agents in production or pilot, with another 14% planning to within a year. The payoff is striking: teams running agents in production or pilot achieve revenue impact at 82% vs. 42% for teams not using them, one of the widest gaps in the survey. Sales-team use of AI agents What are those agents actually doing? ### The first agent jobs: prep, follow-up, and battlecard recommendations. Among teams using agents, the most common jobs are post-call follow-up, battlecard recommendations, and meeting prep, closing the last mile by putting competitive insight into the rep's hands at the moment of the deal. What teams put AI agents to work on “ > We are trying to build AI-driven systems that synthesize news, internal updates, and competitor actions into concise, actionable insights for the field — focusing on the ‘So what?’ and strategic implications rather than just relaying news. Director of Market & Competitive IntelligenceFortune 10 healthcare company 06 Blueprint for success ## The 12 factors most correlated with revenue impact. Pull every chapter together and the same practices separate the teams driving revenue from everyone else. We mapped the dozen with the strongest pull, grouped into three clusters: your blueprint for what to build. (Associations, not proof of cause; the strongest programs tend to do all of them at once.) ### 01 Get structured Measurement and executive backing: the foundation every high-impact program is built on, and where the widest gaps open up. Share of teams achieving revenue impact, comparing those **with** the practice to those **without** it. KPIs + an exec sponsor (both) With 88% Without 29% 3×as likely Track real KPIs With 81% Without 34% 2.4×as likely Dedicated CI platform With 75% Without 40% 1.9×as likely Executive sponsor in sales With 77% Without 44% 1.8×as likely ### 02 Get on a weekly clock Cadence beats tooling. The programs that put intel in front of sales weekly, or faster, pull away on every outcome. Share of teams achieving revenue impact, comparing those **with** the practice to those **without** it. Sales requests deal help weekly+ With 84% Without 45% 1.9×as likely Share CI weekly or faster With 79% Without 41% 1.9×as likely Update deliverables weekly+ With 83% Without 49% 1.7×as likely Solicit sales feedback weekly+ With 84% Without 52% 1.6×as likely Cadence moves adoption even harder than revenue: soliciting sales feedback weekly is the single biggest driver of strong CI adoption in the survey: 69% vs. 22%. ### 03 Put AI to work The newest divide. Teams that move AI from drafting content to acting in the sales motion (agents, chatbots, a real toolset) see the widest gaps of all. Share of teams achieving revenue impact, comparing those **with** the practice to those **without** it. AI agents in production or pilot With 82% Without 42% 2×as likely CI available via a chatbot With 79% Without 43% 1.8×as likely Uses 4+ AI tools With 82% Without 52% 1.6×as likely Uses AI for compete content With 67% Without 40% 1.7×as likely Click to share 90% of teams with all three (KPIs, a CI platform, and an exec sponsor) achieve revenue impact, vs. just 25% with none of them. That's **3.6× the rate**. 2026 State of Competitive Intelligence · Crayon 07 Key takeaways ## Where to start. If this report leaves you with one thing, let it be this short list. You don't need a bigger budget to begin. You need to begin in the right order, because each move makes the next one pay off. 1. 1 Start by setting real KPIs. If you do one thing this quarter, make it this. Tie a metric to revenue (competitive win rate is the usual place to start), and everything that follows finally has something to aim at. 2. 2 Then win an executive sponsor in sales. Once you can show what you're moving, take it to a sales leader and ask them to own it with you. Their air cover is what gets the rest of this funded and actually adopted. 3. 3 Put a dedicated platform underneath it. When the program outgrows scattered docs and spreadsheets, give it a real home. The teams that buy in pull ahead of the teams still stitching compete together by hand. 4. 4 Tap into the intel you already own. Feed the program from the sources the best teams lean on: internal data and call recordings, win/loss from buyers and sellers, and competitor-site intelligence. The richest programs blend all of them. 5. 5 Share intel weekly, not quarterly. This is the habit that quietly separates the leaders. Pick one weekly ritual and route it to where sellers already work: the CRM, Slack, and your enablement tool. 6. 6 Automate your CI program with AI. You're probably already using AI to draft content. The next edge is automating the program itself: agents that prep reps and surface intel in live deals, not just generate copy. Start at the top and work your way down. You'll feel each step make the next one easier. What's next ## Put this report to work ### [See Crayon in action Get a personalized demo of how the most competitive teams turn these patterns into pipeline. Request a demo](https://www.crayon.co/demo) ### [Grade your CI program Get a personalized benchmark of how your program stacks up against this year's State of CI companies. Take the 1-minute grader](https://www.crayon.co/ci-maturity-grader-1?utm_source=state-of-ci-report&utm_medium=cta&utm_campaign=soci-2026) ### [Save it for later Download a PDF of the full report to share with your team or read offline. Save as PDF](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence-2026#) CRAYON. © 2026 Crayon, Inc. All rights reserved. · The 2026 State of Competitive Intelligence, 9th Edition. Methodology: based on Crayon's annual survey of competitive intelligence, sales, and revenue leaders. It is the industry's longest-running CI report, now in its ninth year. Year-over-year comparisons draw on the 2022–2026 editions. Percentages are calculated among respondents who answered each question. [crayon.co](https://www.crayon.co)