OpenAI report reveals significant AI agent usage gap among EU businesses

ChainCatcher report: On October 14, OpenAI’s Economic Research Team released a report stating that EU businesses are expanding their use of AI by adopting agent tools—not merely asking AI questions, but using agents to complete tasks ranging from planning to execution. The report examines the growth in agent adoption among large and small enterprises, differences in usage intensity, and the types of work people are accomplishing using ChatGPT. Among EU samples of ChatGPT Enterprise customers, Codex and ChatGPT tasks currently account for over half of all output tokens. Since May 2026, the number of weekly active users for Codex and ChatGPT tasks among EU small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has increased more than 8.1-fold, with growth observed in all member states. SMEs are defined as companies with no more than 200 associated users. The share of relevant output tokens ranged from a low of 22% in Slovenia to a high of 85% in Lithuania. Leading enterprises are defined as the top 10% of companies ranked by output tokens per active user; the sample includes only ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Business accounts. In September, the metric for leading enterprises in the EU surpassed that of general EU enterprises by more than four times, while leading enterprises outside the EU still exceeded those within the EU by more than double. Enterprises headquartered in the EU accounted for only 10% of global leading enterprises.