AI (Artificial Intelligence) concept. Deep learning. GUI (Graphical User Interface).
The AI Divide In Businesses – Who Is Using It, And Who Isn’t
AI may be everywhere in the headlines, but the numbers show that it is not everywhere in business – at least not yet.
According to WeWork’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, 21.7% of U.S. businesses reported using AI in July 2026, up from 17.7% in January.
The data comes from the Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), comparing January and July results, along with its April AI Supplement, which looked more closely at how businesses are actually using the technology. The survey asked roughly 1.2-million U.S. businesses whether they had used AI in the previous two weeks and whether they expected to use it over the following six months. The supplement was added in to give more insight into everything AI – from specific AI tasks to employment effects and barriers to adoption.
BUSINESS SIZE MATTERS
Company size appears to be one of the biggest dividing lines. Just 20.8% of businesses with one to four employees reported using AI, compared with 38.8% of companies with 250 or more employees, nearly twice the rate. Industry matters, too. Among office-heavy sectors, Information leads the pack at 43.7% adoption, followed by Professional, Scientific & Technical Services at 37.6% and Finance & Insurance at 36.0%.
Looking within the Information sector, the largest companies are in a league of their own. A whole 77% of firms with 250 or more employees use AI. This makes sense when you think about what these companies do – software, telecommunications, data and media all circulate around the information-processing tasks AI is built to accelerate.
One thing is clear though. Bigger does not necessarily equal faster. In the Finance & Insurance industry, for example, AI use among firms with 100–249 employees climbed to 62.7%, while adoption among the largest firms fell to 42.2%.
WHERE AI IS GROWING
AI adoption is spreading at different rates depending on the city and state. Looking at the 25 largest U.S. metro areas, 15 of them had AI adoption rates above the national average in July. Tampa posted the biggest jump, rising 14.9 percentage points to reach 32.0%. Detroit followed, climbing 11.4 points to 24.5%. While it might look like there’s a trend, Phoenix went in the opposite direction. After leading the major metros in January at 30.1%, its adoption rate dropped 8.6 percentage points to 21.5% in July.
Even more notable is that businesses seem to have overestimated how quickly they would adopt AI. In January, companies said they expected AI use to rise by 4.7 percentage points over the next six months. But by July, that expected growth had fallen to just 2.8 points. Across the country, actual adoption landed at just 0.7 percentage points below what businesses had predicted. So, the excitement is real, but when it comes to actual implementation it is proving harder than expected.
So how are companies actually using AI? Sales and Marketing is the most common business function, with 14.3% of companies reporting AI use in the area. Among employees using generative AI, the most common task is writing and editing, reported by 85.4% of businesses.
While there has been a good bit of concern about AI replacing workers across the workforce, 95.7% of AI-using businesses reported no change in headcount.
For businesses that have not adopted AI, the biggest barrier isn’t necessarily cost or fear, but 61.6% say AI simply isn’t applicable to their business.
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