EU's AI adoption shifts to agentic tools, report finds

From questions to actions

The European Union is entering a new phase of artificial intelligence use, according to a recent report from OpenAI. Businesses are moving past simple question-and-answer interactions and toward "agentic" tools that can carry out entire tasks from start to finish. Agentic AI means the system doesn't just give you information—it plans and executes multi-step work on your behalf.

Among ChatGPT Enterprise customers in the EU, agentic features—specifically Codex and ChatGPT Work—now generate more than half of all output tokens, indicating they are a central part of daily work¹.

Uneven progress across the bloc

The trend extends to smaller companies. Since May 2026, the number of weekly active small and medium-sized businesses (those with 200 or fewer associated users) using these tools has grown more than eightfold across every EU member state¹.

However, adoption is far from uniform. The share of output coming from agentic tools among enterprise accounts ranges from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania, showing a wide gap between countries¹. The kind of work performed with AI also varies by nation, and some firms use the technology much more intensively than others. OpenAI defines "frontier firms" as the top 10% of companies by output tokens per active user. In September, EU frontier firms produced over four times as many tokens per user as typical EU firms.

Closing the gap

Yet even those leading EU companies still lag behind global peers. Frontier firms outside the EU generated more than twice as many tokens per active user as frontier EU firms, and EU-based firms made up only 10% of the global frontier—a notable shortfall given the EU holds a larger share of the world's registered companies¹.

Sarah Friar, OpenAI's chief financial officer, said the continent is now in a new era of AI with tools that can perform tasks for people. "Europe is now in a new era of AI, with tools that can carry out tasks for people. More than half of the AI use among our EU enterprise and business customers now involves these tools, and the number of small business users has grown 8x across the region," she said¹. She added that giving workers the right skills and confidence will help build stronger businesses and economies.

The report highlights that the EU's opportunity lies in turning broader adoption into deeper use, stronger businesses, higher productivity and meaningful benefits for workers. That means helping companies move beyond experimentation, giving employees the skills and confidence to use AI well, and making advanced capabilities more accessible and affordable.

Key facts

• Agentic tools (Codex and ChatGPT Work) now account for over half of output tokens among EU enterprise customers.
• Weekly active small and medium businesses using agentic AI grew more than eightfold across the EU since May 2026.
• Adoption is uneven: the share of agentic output ranges from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania.
• EU frontier firms generate over four times more tokens per active user than typical EU firms, but still trail global frontier firms by more than half.
• EU-based firms represent only 10% of global frontier firms despite the EU holding a larger share of registered companies worldwide.

Sources

1. The EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic