Patient Capital and Artificial Intelligence Decoupling

Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven transformations are reshaping managerial practice, yet firms’ strategic discourse often diverges from actual AI investment and implementation. We conceptualize this divergence as AI decoupling, defined as the misalignment between AI-related rhetoric and substantive AI investment and execution. Prior research largely attributes such misalignment to legitimacy pressures or managerial opportunism, but pays limited attention to how investor structure and temporal orientation shape AI decoupling. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed firms between 2004 and 2022, we examine patient capital as a governance condition influencing AI decoupling. We find that both equity- and debt-based patient capital are negatively associated with AI decoupling, with equity-based patient capital exerting a significantly stronger constraining effect. Directional analyses show that equity-based patient capital primarily curbs AI washing, whereas debt-based patient capital mitigates AI silence, revealing distinct governance channels across capital forms. We further identify two boundary conditions. Perceived environmental uncertainty weakens the constraining effect of patient capital, whereas analyst coverage strengthens its governance role by enhancing transparency and external accountability. Taken together, these findings advance research on AI decoupling by demonstrating how patient capital aligns AI rhetoric with organizational action under varying informational and uncertainty conditions.