Arcana Research

Peer intelligence from the leaders deploying enterprise AI.

A quarterly study of Fortune 1000 technology leaders. Members exchange thirty minutes for proprietary benchmarks, four indices, and an off-the-record view of how peers are actually deploying AI.

Founded by

Ian Kar — Managing Partner & Cofounder. Cofounded Fintech Today (acquired 2022); product at Acorns. Bylines in The Atlantic, World Economic Forum, and American Banker.

Ken Male — Senior Partner. Founded TheInfoPro, acquired by S&P Global Market Intelligence. 30 years pioneering peer-based IT research at Gartner, Giga, and Apptio.

An invitation

You've been nominated.

You were nominated by someone already in the room. Practitioners, not analysts — trading thirty minutes per quarter for benchmarks, four proprietary indices, and an off-the-record read on how enterprises are actually deploying AI.

The data syllabus

Come prepared with.

Thirty minutes about how your enterprise is actually deploying AI. Before you start, gather:

Spend by category

Line items across foundation models, compute, data, governance, software engineering, and SIs.

Your AI roadmap

What's in production, what's in pilot, what's on the bench, and what's out of scope.

The vendors you're using

Primary picks across the six core categories — and the alternatives you're evaluating.

How they're performing

Your read on each vendor's reliability, quality, and business yield.

Preview the full data syllabus

The room

Who's already in.

Practitioners at $1B+ enterprises with 2,000+ employees, deploying beyond pilots, with budget authority. No vendors in the data set.

Head of AIChief Technology OfficerChief Information OfficerVP EngineeringChief Data OfficerSVP ProductDirector of MLVP AI Strategy

Membership benefits

What members receive.

1AI Vital Stats

Your AI spend, vendor stack, and adoption posture, benchmarked against your peer group.

24 hours
2Peer Comparison

Your investments, vendors, and governance posture compared to enterprises at your scale.

Each quarter
3Pulse Study

Aggregated findings across six core categories and fifteen emerging technologies.

End of quarter

Research scope

What we research.

Six core categories with vendor ratings and roadmap status, fifteen emerging technologies tracked quarterly, and four proprietary indices.

Foundation Models
Data Foundation
AI Software Eng
AI Compute
Consulting & SIs
AI Governance & Risk
AI Search / RAGAgent OrchestrationOpen-Source ModelsFine-tuningAI MonitoringKnowledge MgmtAI CybersecurityProcess AutomationSLMs / Edge AISynthetic Data+5 more

Four proprietary indices

Spend Index
Category-level budget tracking across the panel.
Heat Index
0–100 scoring per technology category.
Yield Index
Business impact barometer.
Vulnerability Index
Vendor switching and replacement risk.

The network

How members connect.

Beyond the data, members trade tactics with peers facing the same enterprise AI questions.

Online roundtables

Topic-specific working sessions throughout the quarter where peers share what's working, what isn't, and what they wish they knew earlier. Members-only. Practitioner-led.

In-person dinners

Intimate gatherings of 16–20 senior leaders, hosted in major hubs as the network grows. Chatham House Rule. No vendors, no press, no keynotes.

Thirty minutes per quarter. Every response anonymized. The methodology comes from 30 years of enterprise benchmarking at The InfoPro and S&P Global Market Intelligence.

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