EU businesses expand agentic AI use, but adoption gaps persist

Agentic tools are becoming a substantial part of how EU businesses use AI, moving beyond answering questions to carrying out tasks from planning through completion. In OpenAI’s EU sample of ChatGPT Enterprise customers, Codex and ChatGPT Work account for more than half of output tokens. Since May 2026, weekly active users of these tools among EU small and medium businesses grew more than eightfold, with growth across every member state. OpenAI defines these businesses as having 200 or fewer associated users.

Adoption varies sharply across countries. Among sampled ChatGPT Enterprise accounts, the share of output tokens generated through Codex and ChatGPT Work ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania. The kinds of work people bring to ChatGPT also differ across countries.

Usage intensity exposes another gap. OpenAI defines frontier firms as the top 10% of firms by output tokens per active user. In September, EU frontier firms generated more than four times as many output tokens per active user as typical EU firms, while frontier firms outside the EU generated more than twice as many as their EU counterparts. OpenAI identifies worker skills, confidence, affordability and access to advanced capabilities as priorities for turning wider adoption into deeper business use.