AI agents account for 55% of artificial intelligence use in EU businesses, according to OpenAI. Spain is at 30% and ranks 24th out of 27 member states.
The 55% of artificial intelligence use in European Union businesses corresponds to agents, according to the OpenAI Economic Research report from October, as reported by Ecosistema Startup. Spain is at 30% and occupies 24th place out of 27 member states.
The study is based not on perception surveys, but on data from ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Business clients, measured in output tokens generated through Codex and ChatGPT Work. In other words, it measures actual and billed usage. It distinguishes between adoption, which is having access to an agent, and intensive use, which is integrating it into daily work. Companies that use it the most generate over 300% more results per user than those that barely use it.
“More than half of the AI usage among our business and corporate clients in the EU already involves the use of these tools, and the number of small businesses using them has multiplied eightfold across the region.”
This is stated by Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI. By country, smaller markets lead: Lithuania (85%), Cyprus (81%), and Estonia (71%). Larger economies lag behind: France (55%), Germany (51%), and Spain (30%).
A report from the Microsoft AI Economic Institute places Spain in sixth place globally in general AI adoption, with 44.2% of its economically active population using it, ahead of the United States, which ranks 21st with 31.3%. Spain uses a lot of AI on an individual level, but incorporates it little into its business processes.
In the case of European SMEs, the weekly active users of agents increased by over 700% between May and early October, with growth exceeding 400% across all member states. In Spain, those users multiplied by 8.8, above the EU average (8.1). Belgium (12.1 times), Italy (10.8 times), and Luxembourg (10.0 times) lead this advancement.
The gap with companies that already use AI intensively remains wide. In the EU, the most advanced companies produce 6.1 times the tokens per active user of a typical company, while outside the EU, that ratio rises to 12.9 times. European companies represent only 10% of the most advanced companies in the world, compared to 65% in North America and 13% in Asia-Pacific.
SMEs are a significant part of the change. They represent 63% of private employment in the EU and contribute over 5 trillion euros annually. The Microsoft Labour Trends Index for 2026 points in the same direction: active agents in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem grew 15 times compared to the previous year, and 18 times in large companies.
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