Companies that communicated their AI strategy well beat their sector benchmarks by a wide margin, a new study from communications firm Gregory finds. The top tier gained 10.8% average alpha in the 90 days after their announcements, while the weakest communicators lost 2.2%.
How a company talks about its AI rollout, not just whether it builds one, tracks closely with its stock performance. A new study from global communications firm Gregory scored 449 companies on the quality of their AI announcements from 2022 to 2025 and found a 13-point spread in returns between the best and worst communicators.
How Gregory scored the rollouts
The firm rated each company across five dimensions to build an "AI Communications Quality Score" (ACQS) on a scale of 0 to 20. Those factors were CEO ownership, named use cases, 90-day follow-through, board and governance record, and tier-1 media coverage. A high score rewarded specific, personally owned plans over vague promises to explore the technology.
Gregory then sorted its 100 highest-scoring companies into three tiers: Tier 1 for scores of 18 to 20, Tier 2 for 15 to 17, and Tier 3 for 12 to 16. Of the 449 companies assessed, only 13 landed in the top tier — less than 3% of the sample.
The alpha gap
The performance split was stark. In the 90 days after their announcements, Tier 1 companies saw an average alpha improvement of 10.8% against sector benchmarks, while Tier 3 companies lost 2.2% alpha on average over the same window.
Tier 2 companies also posted gains, but modest ones. They added just 1.2%, nine times below the top tier's improvement.
Source: Fast Company
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