Distribution Strategy Group’s first AI Top 25 offers a blunt reality check for distributors that have spent the past two years talking up artificial intelligence without yet embedding it deeply into day-to-day operations. After assessing more than 300 North American distributors, DSG concluded that only 26 have AI running in production, not in pilots or on planning slides.
The more striking figure is not the number of companies on the list, but the gulf between intention and ...
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execution. DSG found that 93% of distributors now describe AI as a strategic priority, yet only 16% have pushed it beyond experimentation and into live use. For most firms, the problem is not the software itself, but the organisational muscle required to make it stick.
The companies at the top of the ranking are also revealing. DSG’s Platinum tier includes ADI Global Distribution, Fastenal, Ingram Micro, Sonepar, W.W. Grainger and Wesco International. These are large-scale businesses with mature technology teams, significant capital and the kind of long-term systems modernisation that makes enterprise AI deployment more realistic. Fastenal, for example, has spent decades expanding its operational footprint and this year marked 25 years in Mexico, while also announcing a new Southeast US logistics centre in Carrollton, Georgia, due to open in spring 2027. Those moves underline the scale and continuity that tend to support broader digital transformation.
But DSG’s findings point to a broader lesson for the wider market: size helps, but structure matters more. According to Jonathan Bein, DSG’s co-founder and managing partner, the biggest obstacle is people rather than technology. In practice, that means unclear ownership, disconnected systems and pilots that are never properly measured against business outcomes.
The leaders, DSG says, share a similar operating model. They assign one person real authority over AI programmes, insist that deployments reach production, and build use cases so they reinforce one another instead of sitting in isolation. Just as importantly, each initiative is tied to a measurable commercial result rather than a vague technology ambition.
That distinction matters because the industry is starting to formalise its expectations around AI. The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and the AI Applied Consortium have released an AI Governance Architecture this year, while NAW’s Institute is due to publish what it says will be the first AI Adoption Index in September. In other words, distributors are moving from broad enthusiasm towards scrutiny, governance and benchmarking.
For firms still early in the journey, the question is less about matching the scale of Fastenal or Grainger than about whether they have the basics in place: clear ownership, live production use and systems that can support successive deployments. That is also the logic behind Unilog’s HyperScale platform, which is designed to embed AI agents into existing product-content and eCommerce workflows rather than require a separate transformation programme.
DSG’s ranking therefore reads less like a trophy list than a warning label. The industry has largely decided AI matters. The harder task, now, is proving it can deliver.
Source: Noah Wire Services
