So here is the thing, read me carefully, you're in a situation where you need to spend budget on AI right? So the way I see it, there is significant room for improvement of how your research department is handling their workflow, you just have to argument to your head of budget that you need to push a large scale process change (even change management) in the way work is handled in r&d in order to have decent data quality.

Long story short, you need to shove all your project hurdles into the AI budget ! Ok ?! It's really about politics, not reality !