Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly in popularity, and businesses are starting to get in on the action. Companies are turning to AI in an attempt to increase productivity and decrease costs.
By tracking AI adoption rates, we can see which types of businesses and which parts of the country are incorporating AI the most. Even if it seems like businesses everywhere are integrating AI technology into their operations, that perception doesn't quite match reality.
So how many companies use AI, and where is it most common? The U.S. Census Bureau has been tracking this information as part of its biweekly Business Trends and Outlook Survey, which includes responses from 1.2 million businesses split into six rotating panels.
Explore the latest AI statistics below, including current and projected usage rates nationwide, as well as at the state, city, sector, and business-size levels.
National AI Usage Rates
- Current AI business usage rate: 9.9%
- Projected AI business usage rate, next 6 months: 14%
Although AI hasn't reached widespread adoption yet, usage is steadily growing. Business usage of AI has nearly tripled, from 3.7% to 9.9% of companies surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau since it started collecting this data in the fall of 2023. Projected AI usage more than doubled, going from 6.3% to 14%.
Those numbers might appear low given how AI is often discussed as a game changer for businesses. That could be for a few reasons.
First, the Census survey asks specifically if AI has been used to produce goods or services, which respondents could interpret as excluding back-of-office functions that utilize AI, like marketing or project management.
Second, some businesses might be using AI tools without realizing they are powered by AI. Or their employees may be using AI even if the tools aren’t recognized as part of an official business strategy.
Third, AI use cases are still relatively narrow, and use on a large scale can be complex and expensive.
AI Usage Rates by State
Washington D.C. has the most AI business adoption so far, with a usage rate of 22%. It's followed by Colorado, Washington, Georgia, and Nebraska.
In terms of projected AI usage by businesses, Washington, D.C. also leads. Colorado, Washington, South Dakota, and South Carolina round out the top five states for projected usage.
Wisconsin has the lowest reported AI usage rate at 4.8%. West Virginia’s projected AI usage rate is the lowest at 8.6%.
After Wisconsin, the next four states with the lowest AI usage are Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, and Indiana. The next lowest by projected usage are Mississippi, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Not all states had AI usage rates available as of the most recent Business Trends and Outlook survey. It's possible that some states had higher or lower totals that went unreported. Also worth mentioning is that rates in some states can fluctuate quite a bit from survey to survey.
AI Usage Rates by City
The greater Denver area is currently the nationwide leader in current (19.6%) and projected AI business usage (24.5%). Other metropolitan areas with high AI usage among businesses include Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta.
After Denver, the next four metropolitan areas by projected AI usage by businesses are San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford.
Among the top 25 metropolitan areas, New York-Newark-Jersey City has the lowest current AI usage by businesses and St. Louis has the lowest projected rate.
AI Usage Rates by Sector
Information companies are leading the way in AI adoption, with a 9.8% usage rate and a 36.8% projected usage rate. Professional services, finance and insurance, and educational services companies also have high AI usage and projected usage.
AI naturally fits into the information sector, which includes tech, media, and data companies. Many businesses in the space are digital first, which makes AI integration easier. Similarly, professional services are data- and communications-heavy industries with plenty of applications for AI tools.
In the most recent Business Trends and Outlook survey, accommodation and food services had the lowest AI usage, followed by the other services category, and then transportation and warehousing.
However, there wasn't any data on current or projected AI usage available for the agriculture, management of companies, or mining sectors. Once again, it's possible that these sectors had higher or lower totals that went unreported.
AI Usage Rates by Business Size
Larger businesses are more likely to use AI. Companies with 250 or more employees report an AI usage rate of 12.5% over the last two weeks, higher than smaller businesses, and also have the highest projected AI usage rate at 17.8%. Firms with 100 to 249 employees also show elevated usage and projections compared with smaller businesses.
However, this doesn't mean that AI usage increases evenly with company size. Small businesses with one to four employees had the second-highest AI usage rate at 10.9%.What Workers are Using AI?
What Types of Workers Are Using AI?
AI usage is most common in the computer and mathematical field by a wide margin. Of queries sent to Claude.ai, 40.2% are in that category, according to a report by the Anthropic Economic Index. Here's a complete look at AI usage by occupational category based on Claude.ai queries.
Outside of tech companies, other areas where AI is used fairly often are in education and library services; arts and media; office and administrative work; and life, physical, and social sciences. As you'd expect, jobs reliant on physical labor have the lowest AI usage rates. The most notable example is farming, fishing, and forestry, which accounted for just 0.1% of queries.
Still, a growing number of occupations are using AI. The way they use AI depends heavily on the type of job.
Some occupations predominantly use AI for automation, meaning the model directly completes a task with minimal human involvement. Computer systems administrators, web administrators, and software developers are the top occupations that use AI in this way.
Other occupations mainly use AI for augmentation, where the model and the human work together on a task. Copywriters, editors, and instructional designers are the top occupations that use AI to augment their work.
Is AI Adoption About to Take Off?
No industry has high AI adoption yet, but that could change over the next few years. Leading AI companies are seeing massive demand and making significant investments in product development.
U.S. private AI investment reached a new high of $109 billion in 2024, according to Stanford HAI's 2025 AI Index Report. And many major tech companies have plans to increase their AI data center spending even more going forward. The Stargate Project is a recent example -- SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle(ORCL -0.96%), and MGX are planning to invest $500 billion toward building new AI infrastructure in the United States.
One of the main drivers of AI adoption is the development of lower-cost models. These make it easier and more affordable for companies to integrate AI throughout their businesses. AI models are getting cheaper -- the cost of querying an AI model that scores the equivalent of GPT-3.5 went from $20 per million tokens in November 2022 down to $0.07 per million tokens by October 2024, according to Stanford HAI. That trend should continue, spurred by competition from Chinese AI company DeepSeek.
How much AI use increases will also depend on how it affects productivity. The early returns on this are promising, with studies finding that AI can boost worker productivity on certain tasks but not all of them. Businesses will need to evaluate which tasks are suitable for AI to best implement it in their operations.
About the Author
