AI Use by U.S. Businesses
The Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey tracks AI use every two weeks across the economy. Between December 2025 and May 2026, overall adoption held around 17-20%, but the gap by company size is stark: firms with 250+ employees report 37% AI use, the 100-249 employee bracket sits at 32%, and firms with 4 or fewer employees stay under 20%. Adoption also varies sharply by industry, from 39.7% in Information and 33.9% in Finance and Insurance down to roughly 14% in Retail Trade.
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AI in Business: Small Firms Closing In
Drawing on the same Census Bureau survey data, the SBA found small-business (under 250 employees) AI use climbed from 6.3% in February 2025 to 8.8% by August 2025, against 11.1% for large firms earlier in that window. The trajectory suggests small businesses are running roughly a year behind large companies, not permanently behind, and they're already leading in specific use cases like automated marketing. Advocacy's Chief Counsel summed it up as businesses using AI mainly to expand and justify hiring, not to cut it.
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AI Adoption Among Small Businesses
Using the Fed's 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, the San Francisco Fed's community development team found close to 40% of small business respondents already using or planning to use AI, most commonly for productivity tasks, marketing and social media, written communication, and customer service. The same respondents pointed to real friction: the cost of the right tools, the staff time needed for training and system changes, and simply not knowing where to start. Sentiment split widely too, from genuine enthusiasm to outright skepticism, depending on the firm.
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Small Businesses Embrace AI
Goldman's 10,000 Small Businesses program surveyed owners across all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico in early 2026 (fielded with Babson College and David Binder Research) and found 76% already using AI, with 93% of those users reporting a positive effect on the business, most often citing efficiency and productivity gains, and 67% expecting it to grow revenue. But only 14% consider AI fully embedded in daily operations, and 73% said they'd benefit from more training and implementation support, with limited technical expertise and data privacy concerns the biggest hold-ups.
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2026 AI Impact Report
Intuit's 2026 AI Impact Report, built with University of Chicago economists, combined a survey of more than 34,000 small and midsize business owners with anonymized data from 5.3 million QuickBooks businesses across the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. It found 77% of U.S. small businesses now use AI regularly, up from 48% just eighteen months earlier, with 78% reporting improved productivity and 43% pointing to a direct increase in revenue.
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U.S. Census Bureau
May 2026
