Market data
AI Adoption by Company Size in Europe 2025
In 2025, 55.0% of EU enterprises with 250 or more employees used at least one AI technology, against 17.0% of those with 10 to 49 employees, a gap of 3.2 times, according to Eurostat.
How much more do large companies use AI than small ones?
| Item | 2025 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 to 49 employees | 17.0% | 11.2% | |
| 50 to 249 employees | 30.4% | 21.0% | |
| 250 or more employees | 55.0% | 41.2% |
The base is all enterprises in the size class, so each row is a share of that class. Enterprises with 250 or more employees were 3.2 times as likely to use AI as those with 10 to 49 employees in 2025.
Which AI technologies split the size classes most?
Generating written or spoken language, or code
| Item | 2025 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 to 49 employees | 7.0% | 4.6% | |
| 50 to 249 employees | 14.8% | 7.9% | |
| 250 or more employees | 31.7% | 16.6% |
Machine learning for data analysis
| Item | 2025 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 to 49 employees | 3.8% | 3.1% | |
| 50 to 249 employees | 8.7% | 7.3% | |
| 250 or more employees | 25.1% | 20.6% |
Analyzing written language (text mining)
| Item | 2025 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 to 49 employees | 9.9% | 5.8% | |
| 50 to 249 employees | 18.2% | 10.4% | |
| 250 or more employees | 35.0% | 21.4% |
How fast did each size class grow since 2021?
10 to 49 employees: 6.1% in 2021, 17.0% in 2025; 50 to 249 employees: 12.6% in 2021, 30.4% in 2025; 250 or more employees: 28.4% in 2021, 55.0% in 2025. In percentage points the large enterprises gained the most; in relative terms the smaller classes grew faster from a low base, which is why the size gap in points widened while the ratio narrowed.
What does the size gap mean for someone choosing an AI tool?
A buyer at a 20-person company is in the majority: 17.0% of firms in that size class had adopted any AI technology by 2025, so most peers are still deciding, and a tool that needs a dedicated data team will find few reference customers there. In the 250-plus class, 55.0% had adopted, which is why enterprise features such as single sign-on and audit logs show up in the plans of tools aimed at that segment. The practical reading is that the tools on our software advice pages are rarely bought the same way across the classes: small firms start from a free plan, large ones start from a security review.
Which size class is closing the gap?
Between 2021 and 2025 the share in the smallest class moved by 10.9 points and in the largest by 26.6 points. The Eurostat survey does not ask why, so any explanation, such as cheaper chat assistants reaching small teams first, is our reading and not a surveyed result.
Source
Data: Eurostat table isoc_eb_ai, size classes 10 to 49, 50 to 249 and 250 or more employees, fetched 2026-10-12 (table link).