93% of wholesale distribution executives call AI a strategic priority. Only 16% have deployed it across multiple business functions. That 77-point gap is the subject of this report.
Distribution Strategy Group’s AI Execution Gap brings together two pieces of research to explain why so few distributors are getting AI right — and what the ones who are have in common. The first examines DSG’s State of AI in Distribution survey of 233 wholesale distribution executives, including a majority of C-suite leaders, documenting the wide divide between AI ambition and AI execution. The second is DSG’s AI Top 25, the industry’s first evidence-based benchmark of AI maturity: a two-year evaluation of more than 300 North American distributors using earnings calls, executive interviews, customer case studies, and vendor documentation. Only 26 met the bar — production deployments with measurable business impact, not pilots or announcements.
What those 26 companies share is not better software. It is organizational discipline. Across the benchmark, the same six habits appear regardless of company size, ownership structure, or vertical market: clear executive ownership, a refusal to stay in pilot mode, data quality investment before AI deployment, cross-functional integration, outcome-based measurement, and patience over reactive adoption. The Platinum-tier companies — Grainger, Wesco, Sonepar, Fastenal, Ingram Micro, and ADI Global Distribution — are no longer asking where AI fits. They have embedded it into the operating model and are compounding the advantage with every deployment.
For distributors not yet on the list, the research documents a playbook rather than a closed door. The gap is real, but it is not permanent — and the disciplines that close it are available to organizations of every size.
Download this report to benchmark your organization’s AI maturity against the industry’s top 26, understand the six habits that separate execution from experimentation, and identify where your AI program stands against companies that have already moved from pilots to production.