At this rate, how is it better than pure random chance?

The article mentions 19-20 year old founders, focused on solving single user problems, were the successes.

The sample size is 300 public AI deployments and an undisclosed number of private in-house AI projects. And the survey seems to only consider business applications, as compared with end-user applications like media and software. That's significant but not definitive.

Isn't it more likely that existing problems with low hanging fruit, perhaps unpopular answers, that could be solved by leaning on "AI". And perhaps "AI" wasn't the key to success?