Across the EU, businesses are expanding their use of AI through agentic tools that carry out tasks from planning through completion, rather than simply answering questions. A new report from OpenAI Economic Research examines how this agentic use is growing across enterprises and small businesses, with a focus on differences in usage intensity and the kinds of work people do with ChatGPT.
Among ChatGPT Enterprise customers, agentic use already represents a substantial share of activity. In the EU sample, Codex and ChatGPT Work now account for more than half of output tokens. The shift extends to small and medium businesses, defined as those with 200 or fewer associated users. 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.
Adoption remains far from uniform. The share of output tokens generated through Codex and ChatGPT Work ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania. The kinds of work people bring to ChatGPT also vary by country. EU frontier firms, the top 10% by output tokens per active user, use AI much more intensively than typical EU firms, generating more than four times as many output tokens per active user in September. Still, frontier firms outside the EU generated more than twice as many output tokens per active user as EU frontier firms, and EU-based firms made up only 10% of global frontier firms, a low share given the EU's large share of registered companies worldwide.
The report argues that the EU's opportunity lies in turning broader adoption into deeper use, which could support stronger businesses, higher productivity and benefits for workers. Closing the gap will require helping businesses move beyond experimentation, giving workers the skills and confidence to use AI, and making advanced capabilities more accessible and affordable. Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI, said there is still plenty of room for AI use to grow across the EU.
Source: OpenAI Blog · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing