OpenAI Report: Agentic AI Use Surges in EU, But Adoption Gap Remains

OpenAI Economic Research reports that agentic AI usage is expanding rapidly across the European Union, with users shifting from simple queries to task completion. Among ChatGPT Enterprise customers in the EU sample, Codex and ChatGPT Work now generate more than half of all output tokens.

Rapid Growth in Small Businesses

The shift to agentic tools is particularly pronounced in small and medium businesses (defined as having 200 or fewer users). Since May 2026, weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work in this sector have grown more than eightfold, with increases recorded in every member state.

Uneven Adoption Across Countries

Despite overall growth, adoption intensity varies significantly by country. In the EU sample, the share of output tokens from agentic tools ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania. The types of tasks users perform also differ across regions.

The Global Productivity Gap

EU frontier firms (top 10% by output tokens per user) use AI more intensively than typical EU firms, generating over four times as many tokens per active user in September. However, they still lag behind their global counterparts, who produce more than twice as many tokens per user. EU-based firms represent only 10% of global frontier firms, a low share relative to their proportion of registered companies worldwide.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar notes that while agentic use is growing, closing the gap requires helping businesses move beyond experimentation and providing workers with the necessary skills and confidence.