How frontier firms are pulling ahead

Frontier firms—those at the 95th percentile of usage—now use 3.5x as much intelligence per worker as typical firms, up from 2x a year ago.

The gap is about depth, not just activity: Message volume explains only 36% of the frontier advantage; most of the gap comes from richer, more complex AI use.

Agentic workflows are becoming a frontier marker: The largest advantage shows up in advanced tools, with frontier firms sending 16x as many Codex messages per worker as typical firms.

Where business use cases are broadening across industries, products, and functions

Companies are deploying API use cases across in-app assistants, coding and developer tools, and customer support. These are places where AI can become part of products, services, and internal systems.

Organizations can move toward the frontier: Leading firms measure depth, build governance for production use, invest in enablement, scale what works, and move from chat-based assistance to delegated work with agents.

For many enterprises, the first phase of AI adoption was about access: who had AI tools, how many seats had been deployed, and whether employees were experimenting. That still matters. But access is no longer the differentiator.

Our latest research suggests the frontier advantage is beginning to compound. Frontier firms are pulling ahead because they use more intelligence per worker, adopt advanced tools more intensively, and embed AI more deeply into workflows.