AI use in business: Spain outpaces the US by company size

Spanish companies use more artificial intelligence than American companies of the same size. That is the conclusion of the latevaIA study on AI use in Spanish companies in 2026, which cross-references official data from Spain’s INE (National Statistics Institute) and the U.S. Census Bureau for the first quarter of 2026: in every company-size bracket, the share of companies using AI is higher in Spain, and the gap widens as companies get larger.

33.6% of Spanish companies with 10 or more employees used AI in the first quarter of 2026, according to data published by INE on 22 October 2026. Below you will find the figures by company size, how to read them without drawing too many conclusions, and what they mean if you run a company that has not yet taken the step.

How many companies use AI in Spain and in the United States?

Comparing each country’s national figure is not very useful, because their business structures are different. What is useful is comparing companies of the same size:

Company size	Spain (INE, Q1 2026)	United States (Census Bureau)	Multiple the US would need to match
Fewer than 10 employees	21.4%	17.0%–17.6%	≈1.2x
10 to 49 employees	29.1%	≈18%	≈1.6x
50 to 249 employees	48.9%	21.3%–25.3%	≈2.1x
250 or more employees	74.4%	30.6% (Nov 2025–Feb 2026) and 37% (period ending 3 May 2026)	≈2.4x

Three out of four large Spanish companies already use AI. In the United States, in the same bracket, the figure stays between 30% and 37%. Among mid-sized companies (50 to 249 employees), Spain almost doubles the US figure.

The micro-company bracket (fewer than 10 employees) is the closest, and the study itself treats it as a directional result, not a conclusive one.

Company size is what matters most

The same pattern repeats in both countries: the larger the company, the more likely it is to use AI. In Spain, the jump goes from 21.4% among micro-companies to 74.4% among companies with 250 or more employees. More than 50 points of difference.

“Company size is the strongest predictor of AI use in both countries,” says Francesc Sánchez Loro, CEO of La Teva Web.

The practical explanation is familiar to anyone who has implemented AI in an organisation: large companies have IT teams, structured data and budget for pilots. SMEs, on the other hand, depend on someone in-house having the time and knowledge to identify where AI adds value and how to put it in place.

Is AI use growing in the United States?

Yes, and fast. The Census Bureau’s national series rose from 17.3% in mid-November 2025 to 22.4% on 9 August 2026. Five points in less than nine months.

This matters for reading the comparison correctly: Spain’s lead today is not guaranteed. If the US pace holds, the gap in the smaller brackets could close soon. Where it is harder to close in the short term is among mid-sized and large companies, where the US would need to double its current rate or more.

How to read this data without drawing too many conclusions

The two surveys do not ask exactly the same question, and that affects the comparison:

• Different time window. The INE survey on ICT use and e-commerce in companies asks about AI use during the quarter. The Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) asks about the previous two weeks.
• Effect on the result. A two-week window captures less use than a three-month one. That is why US rates are probably conservative, and the differences in the table should be read as an upper bound, not as the exact gap.
• Sample size. INE surveys around 15,000 companies with 10 or more employees and around 10,000 with fewer than 10. The BTOS invites around 200,000 businesses every two weeks, with a specific AI supplement.

Even with these adjustments, the difference among mid-sized and large companies is too wide to be explained by methodology alone.

Why don’t companies that don’t use AI use it?

This is where the most useful figure for SME managers appears:

• In Spain, 79.6% of companies that considered using AI and did not cite a lack of in-house skills as the reason.
• In the United States, 63.3% of the smallest companies that do not use AI say it is not applicable to their business.

The answer options in each survey are different, so the study does not compare these percentages across countries. But the Spanish figure alone is clear: the main barrier is not interest or the cost of the tools, it is knowing how to apply them.

It is a barrier that can be solved with method. Choose a specific process, measure how much time it takes today, test a limited solution and decide based on numbers. In most SMEs we work with, the first use cases with a clear return are in repetitive tasks: monthly reports, sales proposals or e-commerce product listings.

What it means for a Spanish SME

If your company has between 10 and 49 employees, this is the benchmark: almost 30% of companies like yours already use AI in Spain. It is not a lab technology or something exclusive to large corporations.

If your company has between 50 and 249, the figure is more demanding: practically half of your similarly sized competitors have already adopted it. Staying out in that bracket is starting to be an operational disadvantage, not just a technological one.

In both cases, the sensible first step is not buying a tool, but identifying which processes make sense to automate with AI and which do not. If you want to go further, in this guide we explain which processes to automate, how to do it and when it pays off.