Small Business AI Adoption Index

How many businesses like yours are using AI?

Every two weeks the U.S. Census Bureau asks a large sample of U.S. businesses whether they use AI. We cleaned, modeled and documented the results so you can see where adoption stands by industry, company size, state and metro area, and how your business compares.

Loading the latest Census data…

The trend

AI use is climbing steadily

The share of U.S. businesses that used AI in the past two weeks, and the share that expect to within the next six months. The dashed line projects the next six months from what businesses told Census they planned. Shaded bands are 90% ranges.

All U.S. businesses

Share of businesses answering "Yes", by survey reference period

Show as table

Explore

Who's adopting, and who's behind

Each bar is the average of the last six survey periods (about 12 weeks), which smooths out the noise in smaller groups. The vertical line marks all U.S. businesses. Switch to Growing or Slowing to see whose AI use is rising faster or slower than the country as a whole.

AI use by industry

All U.S. businesses

Show as table

Benchmark your business

How does your business compare?

Choose your industry, company size and location. We'll show how businesses most like yours are using AI compared with everyone else, combining every slice Census publishes.

Methodology

How we built this

This page is a working example of how we approach client data: raw sources go in untouched, every transformation is version-controlled SQL, every metric has a written definition, and tests run before anything reaches a chart.

Source

U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS). It's a biweekly survey of U.S. employer businesses; estimates are weighted by Census to represent all businesses in each group.

Definitions

  • Using AI now: "In the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any of its business functions?"
  • Expect to within 6 months: "During the next six months, do you think this business will be using AI in any of its business functions?"
  • The definition changed in late 2025. Before December 2025, Census asked about AI used "in producing goods or services," a narrower question. We don't splice the two into one trend line, which is why the trend starts in late 2025.

Reading the numbers

  • Benchmarks average the most recent six survey periods (about 12 weeks). Single biweekly estimates for small groups move around a lot.
  • The forecast uses the survey's own forward-looking question. Six months after businesses say whether they expect to use AI, we can see how many actually do. We measure that follow-through rate over the six most recent comparisons and apply it to what businesses expect today. Through spring 2026, businesses did almost exactly what they said; since summer, adoption has run slightly ahead of plans. The shaded range combines survey error with how far past forecasts missed.
  • Growth compares the average of the first six survey periods with the average of the latest six. Groups are ranked only if Census published them in at least four periods of each window.
  • Census suppresses some small-group estimates for reliability. We exclude suppressed values rather than treating them as zero. Groups published in only 1 to 3 of the last six periods are shown faded and marked †.
  • Census publishes industry × company size, but not industry × state. Your benchmark combines the closest slices that exist.
  • No data exists for October 6 to November 16, 2025, because of the federal funding lapse.

Stack

Python ingestion → dbt models on DuckDB (staging → intermediate → marts, with documentation and data tests) → JSON export → this static page.

Want this kind of clarity for your own data?

Book a discovery call