Businesses across the European Union are increasingly adopting agentic SI tools, moving beyond simple query-response interactions to using agents that execute tasks from planning through completion, according to a new report from OpenAI Economic Research.
What Happened
The report highlights a significant shift in usage patterns among ChatGPT Enterprise customers in the EU, where agentic use already constitutes a substantial share of activity. Specifically, the company reports that Codex and ChatGPT Work now account for more than half of all output tokens generated by EU enterprise and business accounts. This trend extends to small and medium businesses (SMBs), defined as companies with 200 or fewer associated users. Since May 2026, weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work among EU SMBs have grown more than eightfold, with growth observed in every member state.
However, the adoption of agentic SI is not uniform across the region. Among ChatGPT Enterprise accounts in the sample, the percentage of output tokens generated through these agentic tools ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania. The report also notes that the types of work users bring to ChatGPT vary significantly by country, indicating diverse local approaches to integrating these tools.
Why It Matters
The data reveals a gap in usage intensity between EU firms and their global counterparts. In September, "frontier firms" in the EU—defined as the top 10% of companies by output tokens per active user—generated more than four times as many output tokens per active user as typical EU firms. Despite this internal disparity, EU frontier firms still lag behind the global frontier, generating less than half the output tokens per active user of frontier firms outside the EU. Furthermore, EU-based companies represented only 10% of the global frontier firms, a low figure considering the EU’s larger share of registered companies globally. This suggests that while adoption is spreading, deeper integration and higher intensity of use are concentrated elsewhere.
Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI, emphasized the economic implications of this shift. She stated that Europe is now in a new era of SI, with tools that can carry out tasks for people, and noted that more than half of the SI use among EU enterprise and business customers now involves these tools. Friar added that the number of small business users has grown 8x across the region, yet there is still plenty of room for SI use to grow across the EU. She concluded that giving people the tools, skills and confidence to use SI well will help build stronger businesses and growing economies, with benefits felt across Europe.
The Bottom Line
As agentic SI capabilities advance, the EU faces the challenge of turning broader adoption into deeper, more intensive use. Closing the gap with global frontier firms will require helping businesses move beyond experimentation, equipping workers with the necessary skills and confidence, and ensuring that advanced SI capabilities remain accessible and affordable across the region.