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SMEs & Freelancers

Spanish companies using AI sell between 53% and 55% more

Spanish companies using AI sell 53% to 55% more than those that do not, according to a study of 62,525 firms. Most SMEs have yet to adopt it.

Marta Uriarte Elizondo
Marta Uriarte Elizondo
· 2 min read
AIIllustrative image: urban street at night lit by street lamps and a faint neon glow, with office facades in the background
Illustrative image: urban street at night lit by street lamps and a faint neon glow, with office facades in the background

A study of 62,525 Spanish companies concludes that those using artificial intelligence sell more. Most SMEs have not yet taken the step.

According to ecosistemastartup.com, a team of researchers analysed 62,525 Spanish companies and found that those using artificial intelligence sell between 53% and 55% more than those that do not employ it. The work was published in The Conversation.

The authors did not use surveys. They extracted information from the companies' websites through web scraping and analysed that text with language models to detect signs of AI usage, in which areas and with what intensity. They then cross-referenced that data with profits, sales, productivity, and number of employees.

The INE set the starting point in 2025: 21% of companies with more than 10 employees used AI, compared to less than 14% of those with fewer than 10.

When usage is intensive, applied to several processes or combined with product innovation, the sales difference rises to between 74% and 76%, and the added value reaches up to 67% more. Between 2022 and 2023, user companies grew in sales between 9% and 13% more per year than others.

The Cotec Foundation provides another figure: the use of AI among companies with 10 or more workers rose from 21.1% in 2024 to 33.6% in 2025. The size gap is wide: 74.4% of large companies use it, compared to 21.4% of microenterprises.

The IndesIA Barometer 2026, which analysed 131,554 SMEs, detected identifiable AI usage in 4.1% of industrial SMEs, compared to 2.9% the previous year. Among medium-sized firms, the figure rises to 6.5%, and among microenterprises to 3.6%. That same barometer attributes a sales growth of 7.25% to SMEs with detected AI, compared to 4.34% for those showing no usage, presenting it as an association, not as a causal relationship.

According to Cotec's analysis, nearly eight out of ten companies that do not use AI cite a lack of internal knowledge as the main reason. Only around 14% believe the technology is not useful for their processes.

A study by The Productivity Institute at the University of Manchester for Bytes Technology Group indicates a similar pattern: companies are adopting AI faster than they are turning it into real productivity.

Marta Uriarte Elizondo

Written by

Marta Uriarte Elizondo

Redactora

Graduada en ADE por la Autónoma y emprendedora frustrada (dos veces). Coleccionista de pitch decks, cafetera y optimista pese a las estadísticas; en Diario Empresas firma las pymes y las startups.

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