Generative AI Statistics 2026

2026-04-01 61.7802431014 2026-07-01 60.8064849529

Work-related Generative AI adoption reported by individuals in the Real-Time Population Survey stands at about 41 percent as of November, with the strongest growth occurring in the most recent quarter.

In 2025, 63.8% of young people aged 16-24 in the EU used generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. This share is nearly twice as high as the share of people in general population who used these tools (32.7% of those aged 16-74).

People aged 16 to 24 were the biggest users of AI (64%), and the share of users decreased steadily with age, standing at only 7% for people aged 65 to 74.

In the EU, Denmark (48%), Estonia and Malta (both 47%), and Finland (46%) had the highest proportion of individuals using generative AI.

People with a high level of formal education were most likely to use generative AI tools (49%), followed by those with a medium level of education (26%).

According to the survey, gender is less of a predictor of generative AI use, but men do use it slightly more than women (35% vs 30%).

When asked why they hadn’t used these tools, most non-users said the main reason was that they simply didn’t feel the need to (64%).

Generative AI reached 53% adoption in three years, faster than the personal computer or the internet.

Despite its lead in AI investment and model development, the United States ranks 24th at 28.3%.

As of May 3, 2026, the AI use rates in the Information (39.7%) and Finance and Insurance (33.9%) sectors were both higher than the national rate (19.8%) but neither reported significant shifts since December.

For example, 37% of firms with at least 250 employees reported using AI in their business operations.

As of May 3, 2026, the AI use rates in the Information (39.7%) and Finance and Insurance (33.9%) sectors were both higher than the national rate (19.8%) but neither reported significant shifts since December.

Additionally, a November iteration of the Survey of Business Uncertainty, which targets senior leaders at U.S. firms, estimates that 78 percent of the labor force works at firms that have adopted AI, and about 54 percent works at firms that use LLMs.

In 2025, 19.95% of EU enterprises used AI technologies.

In 2025, 17% of small enterprises, 30.36% of medium enterprises and 55.03% of large enterprises used AI.

The highest share was recorded in Denmark (42.03%), followed by Finland (37.82%) and Sweden (35.04%), while the lowest shares were recorded in Romania (5.21%), Poland (8.36%) and Bulgaria (8.55%).

In 2025, the information and communication sector (with 62.52%) and professional, scientific and technical service activities (with 40.43%) stood out with the highest share of enterprises that used AI.

In 2025, among EU enterprises who had ever considered using AI technologies, the most common reason for not using AI technologies was the lack of relevant expertise (70.89%), followed by lack of clarity about the legal consequences (52.52%), and concerns regarding violation of data protection and privacy (48.83%).

Generative AI is now used in at least one business function at 70% of organizations, and China and Europe posted the highest year-over-year increases.

As of May 2026, 15% of U.S. employees use AI daily in their role, 30% use it a few times a week or more, and 52% use it a few times a year or more.

Three sectors clearly lead the pack — technology (42%), finance (27%) and professional services (22%) — while daily use across the remaining seven industries ranges from 9% to 15%.

In line with the BTOS, the right panel of figure 4 shows that work-related GenAI adoption reported in the RPS is highest in the financial (63 percent) and professional services (62 percent) sectors.

In 2025, 58% of employees globally reported using AI at work on a semiregular or regular basis, but in India, China, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the share exceeded 80%.

We found an average time savings of 5.4% of work hours in the November 2024 survey.

When we factor in all workers, including nonusers, workers saved 1.4% of total hours because of generative AI.

When it comes to developers, GitHub Copilot now has 50 million users.

Across one hundred thousand real world conversations, Claude estimates that AI reduces task completion time by 80%.

Extrapolating these results to the economy, current generation AI models could increase annual US labor productivity growth by 1.8% over the next decade.

Studies report gains of 14% to 15% in customer support, 26% in software development, and 50% in marketing output.

Employment for software developers ages 22 to 25 has fallen nearly 20% from 2024.

This analysis finds that for each 1-point increase in an occupation’s AI exposure score, men’s employment grew by 6.3%, while women’s employment barely changed (0.2%).

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) expect AI to lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years, while only 5% expect more.

Private investment grew fastest at 127.5% and now accounts for 60% of the total. Generative AI led the surge, growing more than 200% and capturing nearly half of all private AI funding.

The United States continues to lead in global private AI investment, committing 23 times more than China.

Estimated U.S. consumer surplus reached $172 billion annually by early 2026, up from $112 billion a year earlier, with the median value per user tripling over the same period.

Today we’re announcing $110B in new investment at a $730B pre-money valuation.

To meet customer demand and capitalize on the growing opportunities ahead of us, our 2026 CapEx investments are anticipated to be in the range of $175 to $185 billion.

As we scale, we’re getting dramatically more efficient: we were able to lower Gemini serving unit costs by 78% over 2025 through model optimizations, efficiency and utilization improvements.

Our first-party model APIs are now processing nearly 32 billion tokens per minute — 40% more than last quarter and more than four times what we processed a year ago.

Data centres accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, or 415 terawatt-hours (TWh).

Data centre electricity consumption is set to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030.

The United States accounted for the largest share of global data centre electricity consumption in 2024 (45%), followed by China (25%) and Europe (15%).

Globally, data centre electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.

Smarter is faster when it comes to integrating data centres in electricity grids Electricity grids are already under strain in many places: we estimate that unless these risks are addressed, around 20% of planned data centre projects could be at risk of delays.

While 31% expect AI to have a negative effect on them personally over the next two decades, about a quarter believe it will have a positive impact.

A majority (60%) is uncomfortable with AI being used for healthcare tasks like diagnoses and treatments, double the share who says they’re comfortable (30%).

Globally, the share of respondents who say AI products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks rose from 55% in 2024 to 59% in 2025, even as the share saying these products make them nervous increased to 52%.

The United States reported the lowest trust in its own government to regulate AI responsibly of any country surveyed, at 31%.

On average, only 12% are comfortable with news made entirely by AI; this rises to 21% with a ‘human in the loop’, 43% when a human leads with some AI help, and 62% for entirely human-made news (an increase of 4 percentage points since 2024).