In 2025, one in five European Union enterprises with 10 or more employees reported using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, marking a significant jump from 13.5% in 2024.
The adoption rate has steadily increased from just 7.7% in 2021, highlighting the growing role of AI in European business operations.
The Nordic countries continue to lead the way. Denmark tops the chart, with 42% of enterprises using AI, followed by Finland at 37.8% and Sweden at 35%. In contrast, AI adoption remains relatively low in Romania (5.2%), Poland (8.4%) and Bulgaria (8.5%).
Most EU countries saw notable year-on-year growth. Denmark experienced the sharpest rise, up 14.5 percentage points, with Finland (+13.5 pp) and Lithuania (+12.5 pp) not far behind.
AI technologies are being applied in a variety of business functions. Analysing written language was the most common use, reported by 11.8% of enterprises. Other prevalent applications include generating pictures, videos, or audio (9.5%), creating written or spoken content (8.8%), and converting spoken language into machine-readable formats (7.2%).
The largest increases from 2024 to 2025 were seen in written language analysis (+4.9 pp) and generating written or spoken content (+3.4 pp), indicating a growing reliance on AI for communication and content-related tasks. Photo by mikemacmarketing, Wikimedia commons.