OECD Finds One in Five Firms Use AI, Against 52% of Large Companies

The organisation expects the gap to last. It forecasts that smaller firms will largely catch up with big ones on cloud computing by 2030. On AI, though, it projects that by the end of the decade adoption among large firms could be nearly 80% higher than the average for all firms, unless governments give smaller ones targeted support.

For policymakers who want AI to lift output across their economies, that would leave much of the technology in the hands of the largest companies. "AI adoption among firms continues to expand. But to make the most of AI's potential for productivity and competitiveness, we need to make sure adoption spreads to firms of every size," OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said. He named three ways to get there: wider access to cloud services, targeted support for AI and big data analytics, and stronger interoperability and open standards. The OECD said Cormann was presenting the findings at the Tallinn Digital Summit.

The report lists what holds smaller businesses back: limited access to finance, digital infrastructure and specialised skills, the cost of putting AI in place, uncertainty about legal and data protection rules, and difficulty fitting AI into existing systems. More than half of enterprises across the OECD already use cloud computing. But the report found that companies using AI, cloud and big data analytics together are still mostly large firms in knowledge-intensive sectors.

The same split shows up among individuals. In 2025, 37% of people across the OECD used generative AI, with higher use among younger, more educated and higher-income groups. Older adults have nearly caught up on internet access: 87% of people aged 55 to 74 were online in 2025, up from 58% in 2015. They have not caught up on AI. Only 14% of older adults said they had used generative AI, compared with 68% of 16- to 24-year-olds. Of the older adults, 43% said they saw no need for it, 12% cited a lack of skills and 9% a lack of awareness.

Investment in the infrastructure behind AI is growing faster than adoption. The report says venture capital investment in AI companies specialising in IT infrastructure and hosting more than doubled, from $54.5 billion in 2024 to $123.9 billion in 2025. It describes access to computing capacity, alongside skills and data, as a condition for wider AI development and use.

The Outlook also tracks how governments are responding. The OECD reviewed 1,497 policy initiatives across 42 countries in 2025 and found that rule-making has moved away from technology-neutral approaches towards rules written for specific technologies. AI was the technology cited most often. Digital government remained the top digital policy priority, but cybersecurity rose to second place in 2025, its highest ranking in the decade the OECD has collected this data.

Governments are also changing who runs digital policy. Among countries with a national digital strategy, 60% gave a dedicated digital ministry primary responsibility for drafting it in 2025, up from 24% in 2016.

The OECD estimates that the ICT sector across its members grew 5% in 2025. It added that ICT value creation and sourcing are still concentrated in a small number of countries that serve as key production and supply hubs. The report presents this as both an efficiency gain and a source of cross-border dependence, at a time when governments are trying to secure computing capacity at home.