OpenAI Report Highlights EU Agentic AI Adoption Growth
New analysis from OpenAI reveals that agentic AI adoption is growing across EU enterprises and small businesses, while highlighting gaps in usage intensity compared to global peers.
Radwan AbdulhadiEditor and technology writer
The Rise of Agentic AI in the European Union
Across the European Union, businesses are expanding how they use artificial intelligence through agentic tools. People are moving beyond simply asking questions to using agents to carry out tasks from planning through completion. A report from OpenAI Economic Research examines how agentic use is growing across enterprises and small businesses, focusing on differences in usage intensity and the kinds of work people do with ChatGPT.
The latest analysis shows that among ChatGPT Enterprise customers, agentic use already represents a substantial share of activity. In the reviewed EU sample, tools like Codex and ChatGPT Work now account for more than half of output tokens.
Growth Across Small and Medium Businesses
The agentic shift extends well beyond large enterprises into smaller organizations. The analysis defines small or medium businesses as those with 200 or fewer associated users. Since May 2026, weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work among EU small and medium businesses grew more than eightfold, demonstrating growth across every member state.
Despite broad expansion, the adoption of agentic artificial intelligence within the European Union is far from uniform. Within the sample of ChatGPT Enterprise accounts, the share of output tokens generated through Codex and ChatGPT Work ranged significantly from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania.
Furthermore, these differences across countries extend beyond the sheer intensity of agentic use. The specific kinds of work that people bring to ChatGPT also vary noticeably from one country to another.
Comparing EU Frontier Firms to Global Counterparts
The report also examines frontier firms, which are defined as the top 10% of firms by output tokens per active user, utilizing a sample that includes only ChatGPT Enterprise and Business accounts. The findings indicate that EU frontier firms use artificial intelligence much more intensively than typical EU firms, yet they still trail firms operating at the global frontier.
During September, frontier firms located in the European Union generated more than four times as many output tokens per active user compared to typical EU firms. Even so, frontier firms situated outside the European Union generated more than twice as many output tokens per active user as EU frontier firms.
Additionally, EU-based firms represented only 10% of the frontier firms globally. This figure is considered low when taking into account that the European Union accounts for a higher share of registered companies globally.
Unlocking Further Value and Closing the Gap
These figures reveal a substantial gap in how intensively businesses utilize artificial intelligence tools. As agentic capabilities continue to advance, the primary opportunity for the European Union lies in turning broader adoption into deeper use, stronger businesses, higher productivity, and meaningful benefits for workers.
Closing that gap requires helping businesses move past simple experimentation, providing workers with the necessary skills and confidence to use artificial intelligence effectively, and making advanced capabilities more accessible and affordable across the board.
Sources
- OpenAI NewsThe EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic
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