AI Adoption Statistics · UK Businesses · 2026

Adoption Has Tripled. Depth Has Barely Moved

The AI adoption statistics tell a clear story on the surface. Since September 2023, the share of UK businesses using at least one AI technology has risen from 11.9% to 34.9%. That is close to a threefold increase in under three years, and it has risen every quarter.

Two other numbers sit underneath it. One is how much AI each adopter uses. The average number of AI technologies per adopting business has moved from 1.4 to 1.6, which the ONS says implies limited impact so far.

Then there is who is doing the adopting. Over half of employees (55%) say they use AI for work or education, but only 35% of businesses say they use it. Staff are bringing AI into the workplace themselves, and their employers have mostly not bought anything.

Source: Office for National Statistics. The employee figure is from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (Great Britain, 6 May to 28 June 2026). It covers employed and self-employed people who use AI for work or education. Business figures are from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey, Wave 159, for businesses with 10 or more employees. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Adoption Is a Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

Using AI and using it seriously are not the same thing. Of the businesses that have adopted AI, only 16% use it extensively. Among businesses with 10 or more employees, the figure is 10%.

The rest are experimenting with a tool or two on the edges of the business, not running anything important on it. How firms use AI reinforces the point. When adopters say what they use it for, improving day-to-day operations (59%) comes far ahead of developing new products (23%) or exploring new markets (16%).

Among larger firms the gap is wider still. For businesses with 10 or more employees, new products fall to 16% and new markets to 11%. Businesses use AI to shave time off existing tasks, not to change how they work.

In manufacturing, nearly a quarter of firms that report having AI say none of their staff use it in their daily work.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Business Insights and Conditions Survey, Wave 159 (June 2026). Figures relate to businesses that report using at least one AI technology, or are not sure whether they do, across all size bands. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Nobody Is Teaching Staff to Use It

A technology is only as useful as the people who can operate it. On that measure, most UK businesses are not equipped. Even among the businesses that have adopted AI, nearly half (46%) have given no staff any training in using it.

Only 11% of businesses with 10 or more employees have trained more than half their workforce. The gap widens sharply by size. Among the smallest AI-using firms, 49% have trained nobody, compared with 13% of the largest.

Small businesses are less likely to adopt AI in the first place. They are also far less likely to build the in-house capability to make it pay off. That is exactly why the barriers firms report are about know-how, not cost.

The Spending Simply Is Not There

This is where the “boom” falls apart. Ask the businesses that use AI how much they have invested in it over the past year, and the answer is almost nothing. More than three in four have spent under £10,000, including over a third who have spent nothing at all.

At the other end, serious investment is vanishingly rare. Just 1.1% of AI-using businesses report spending between £100,000 and £499,999. The share at £500,000 or more is too small for the ONS to publish.

Even among firms with 250 or more employees, only 6% have put £100,000 or more behind AI. For most of the country, “adopting AI” means a free tool and a subscription, not a budget.

And in Some Sectors, It Is Worse Still

The national picture is thin. In the sectors that keep the country running, it is thinner. Only 22% of manufacturers use any AI at all, against 58% in information and communication.

Of the manufacturers that do use it, 42% have made no investment in it whatsoever, and a further 30% have spent under £10,000. Three quarters of manufacturers (75%) have no plans to adopt any AI technology in the next three months.

When manufacturers do adopt, they reach for the cheapest option. Free-to-use software is the most common route in, used by 49% of AI-adopting manufacturers, ahead of purchased software (35%) or anything developed in-house (15%). It is adoption in name only, ad hoc and unsupported, rather than the kind that changes how a business runs.

Read the Analysis

We have written up the three findings that matter most for UK businesses in more detail.

• Only 16% of UK Businesses Using AI Actually Use It ProperlyWhy shallow adoption rarely pays off, and how to go deep rather than wide.
• 1 in 3 UK Businesses Use AI, but Staff Are Already AheadEmployees have adopted AI faster than their employers. What that gap means.
• 46% of UK Businesses Using AI Give Staff Zero TrainingBuying a tool is not building a capability, and the data shows it.

About This Study

The AI adoption statistics on this page come entirely from official UK sources, which we have analysed ourselves. We have not modelled or estimated anything. Our aim is to turn the ONS data on business technology into a clear picture of where UK firms stand on AI.

Last updated 24 September 2026. The ONS asks its AI questions every sixth BICS wave, so the next results are due in October 2026. We will update this page when they are published.