Market data
AI Use by Purpose and Technology in European Business 2025
Among EU enterprises with 10 or more employees, analyzing written language (text mining) is the most used AI technology at 11.8% (2025), and marketing or sales is the most common purpose at 6.9% (2025).
Which AI technologies do companies use?
| Item | Latest | Earlier year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analyzing written language (text mining) (2025) | 11.8% | 6.9% | |
| Generating pictures, video or audio (2025) | 9.6% | n/a | |
| Generating written or spoken language, or code (2025) | 8.8% | 5.4% | |
| Converting speech to text (2025) | 7.2% | 4.8% | |
| Automating workflows or decisions (2025) | 5.3% | 4.2% | |
| Machine learning for data analysis (2025) | 5.1% | 4.2% | |
| Recognizing objects or people in images (2025) | 3.8% | 3.2% | |
| Autonomous robots and vehicles (2025) | 1.4% | 1.0% |
The percentages use all enterprises as the base, not only AI users, and a company can be counted in several rows. The bracketed year is the newest reference year Eurostat holds for the indicator.
What do companies use AI for?
| Item | Latest | Earlier year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing or sales (2025) | 6.9% | 4.6% | |
| Business administration or management (2025) | 6.2% | 3.7% | |
| Accounting, controlling or finance (2025) | 4.6% | 3.0% | |
| Production processes (2025) | 4.1% | 3.2% | |
| ICT security (2025) | 3.9% | 3.0% | |
| Research, development or innovation (2025) | 3.8% | 2.5% | |
| Logistics (2025) | 1.2% | 0.8% |
Is business AI bought or built?
Eurostat asks where the AI came from. In 2024, 7.3% of EU enterprises used commercial AI software ready to use, against 3.6% that had AI developed or modified by external providers and 2.8% that developed it with their own employees. Ready-made software is the largest route, which is the segment this site compares.
Where is text and code generation most used?
Denmark leads at 30.8% of enterprises using language or code generation in 2025, followed by Finland (20.1%) and Sweden (19.7%). The EU figure is 8.8%.
Source
Figures: Eurostat table isoc_eb_ai, refreshed 2026-10-12. The overview with the country ranking is on market data.