The EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic
OpenAI’s latest report highlights uneven adoption of agentic AI tools across the EU, with some countries leading and others lagging in enterprise and SMB usage.
OpenAI’s Economic Research report examines how businesses in the EU are shifting from query-based AI to agentic tools that complete tasks autonomously. Among ChatGPT Enterprise customers in the EU, Codex and ChatGPT Work now generate over half of all output tokens, indicating significant adoption. The analysis defines SMBs as those with 200 or fewer users and tracks their growing engagement with these tools since May 2026.
Weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work among EU SMBs have surged more than eightfold since May 2026, with growth observed in every member state. However, the intensity of agentic AI use varies widely across countries, from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania among Enterprise accounts.
The report also highlights differences in the types of work delegated to AI across EU countries. Frontier firms, defined as the top 10% by output tokens per active user, use AI far more intensively than typical firms but still trail global leaders. In September, frontier EU firms generated over four times the output tokens per active user compared to typical EU firms.
EU-based firms represent only 10% of global frontier firms despite accounting for a higher share of registered companies worldwide. The data underscores a gap in AI adoption depth, with frontier non-EU firms generating more than twice the output tokens per active user than their EU counterparts.