The EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic
A new report from OpenAI Economic Research examines the growing adoption of agentic AI across European Union enterprises and small businesses. The analysis highlights trends in usage intensity, differences in the types of work performed, and a productivity gap compared to global frontier firms.
The Core Development
Across the EU, businesses are expanding how they use AI through agentic tools. People are moving beyond asking questions to using agents to carry out tasks from planning through completion. Our latest report from OpenAI Economic Research examines how agentic use is growing across enterprises and small businesses, focusing on differences in usage intensity and the kinds of work people do with ChatGPT.
We have found that, among ChatGPT Enterprise customers, agentic use already represents a substantial share of activity . In our EU sample, Codex and ChatGPT Work now account for more than half of output tokens.
This analysis defines small or medium businesses as businesses with 200 or fewer associated users.
Strategic Perspective & Ecosystem Impact
The agentic shift extends to small and medium businesses. Since May 2026, weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work among EU small and medium businesses grew more than eightfold, with growth across every member state.
But we also found that the EU’s adoption of agentic AI is far from uniform. Among the ChatGPT Enterprise accounts in our sample, the share of output tokens generated through Codex and ChatGPT Work ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania. The differences across countries extends beyond the intensity of agentic use. The kinds of work people bring to ChatGPT also vary across countries.
Frontier firms are defined as the top 10% of firms by output tokens per active user. Sample includes only ChatGPT Enterprise and Business accounts.
Why it matters
The analysis underscores a significant productivity and intensity gap between European Union businesses and global frontier firms, highlighting the ongoing challenge of translating broader AI experimentation into deeper enterprise integration.