Sources published a report on 11 October 2026 titled The Veson Platform: The AI Foundation for Maritime Trade, noting a striking pair of figures presented at a recent Singapore Summit by Veson’s chief commercial officer, Russ Hubbard: 88 per cent of organisations now use artificial intelligence somewhere in their business, while 89 per cent say it has not produced a measurable return.
Mr Hubbard told delegates that the two numbers create an apparent paradox and said the gap is not wholly surprising. He posed a question about why widespread adoption has not yet translated into widely felt financial benefit.
Those two statistics, as reported, serve as a concise snapshot of a recurring difficulty for the shipping industry: rapid technical uptake without commensurate demonstrable outcomes. The report does not attempt to offer definitive answers but underscores the need for clearer metrics and more disciplined implementation.
Adoption without returns
Possible explanations for the disparity typically centre on expectations, measurement and integration. Rapid adoption can outpace the establishment of robust performance indicators so that firms believe they are using AI while lacking the means to show its contribution to margins or efficiency.
Operational realities in maritime trade complicate straightforward measurement. Data are frequently fragmented across chartering, operations, finance and counterparties; without consistent, structured inputs an AI model’s outputs are difficult to validate or convert into repeatable business results.
A short factual recap of the figures presented at the Summit:
- 88 per cent: organisations using AI somewhere in their business.
- 89 per cent: organisations reporting no measurable return from those AI investments.
What industry operators might consider
The Veson Platform report, as relayed by reports, implies a need for more rigorous trial design and clearer success criteria when deploying AI. Firms that seek measurable impact often start with tightly scoped pilots, defined end-to-end data flows and explicit commercial objectives rather than technology-for-technology’s-sake trials.
Organisational change is also a factor; new tools require adapted processes and personnel incentives so that algorithmic outputs are acted upon consistently. Without such change, AI can remain an adjunct rather than an enabler of decision-making.
The brief published account from the Singapore Summit should encourage shipowners, operators and their technology partners to re-examine how success is defined and measured. The numbers presented by Mr Hubbard are a prompt for the industry to close the loop between deployment and demonstrable value.
reports’s item, published on 11 October 2026, sets out the initial provocation. It leaves industry readers with a practical starting point: continued adoption must be matched by clearer measurement frameworks if artificial intelligence is to move from experiment to quantifiable advantage in maritime trade.
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