05Business About 2 minutes
Is your industry using AI?
Every two weeks the Census Bureau asks a sample of U.S. businesses whether they used AI. Pick your industry, and optionally your state and size, to see the published shares side by side, and compare your own company with them.
- Describe your company
- Make a guess
- See where you sit
1 Your company
Your own answer (optional comparison): did your company use AI in any business function in the last two weeks?
2 Make a guess Your guess
Your answers stay in your browser. Latest survey period: .
Loading survey data.
3 Share of businesses using AI, latest two weeks Survey estimate
Industry, state and size are separate published tables. The Census Bureau does not publish a combined industry and state figure, so none is shown or estimated here.
4 The trend
The current series starts with the reworded question, collected from November 17, 2025 (reference period November 3 to 16, 2025). Figures before that used different wording and are a separate series.
5 Every industry, side by side
How adoption spreads unevenly across industries, and what that means for competition, is examined in Intelligence Capitalism by Bharat Rao.
Sources and method
- U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), biweekly national, sector, state and employment size class estimates, downloaded from census.gov/hfp/btos/data_downloads (files National.xlsx, Sector.xlsx, State.xlsx, Employment Size Class.xlsx and AI Core Questions.xlsx). U.S. Government work, public domain. Disclosure review approval CBDRB-FY26-0278.
- U.S. Census Bureau, "BTOS AI Core Question Updates," December 3, 2025.
Question wording (verbatim). Current use, from November 17, 2025: "In the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any of its business functions? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.)" Expected use: "During the next six months, do you think this business will be using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any of its business functions?" with the same examples. Earlier series (September 2023 to October 2025): the same questions with "in producing goods or services" in place of "in any of its business functions."
Denominator. Weighted share of responding businesses, weighted to represent all U.S. employer businesses (single and multi location) excluding farms and other out of scope industries. Businesses operating in more than one state are excluded from state estimates, and businesses operating in more than one sector are excluded from sector estimates (they appear as multi-sector companies); both are counted in the national figure. Each biweekly estimate refers to the two weeks before collection; the Census Bureau publishes every other Thursday and does not revise. Published cuts: national, state, sector, subsector, employment size class, the 25 most populous metro areas, and sector by size class.
Method. We show the weighted share of businesses answering Yes to the current use question and, for the outlook sentence, the six-month question. From November 17, 2025 the Census Bureau broadened the wording from "in producing goods or services"; because this caused a level shift, the Bureau started a new series, and we never join the two. The earlier series is available as an option on the chart. No data were collected from October 6 to November 16, 2025 because of the federal funding lapse. Estimates the Bureau suppressed are left blank; where an industry has no estimate for the latest period, its most recent published value is shown and marked. Industry, state and size are separate published tables, so the tool compares your company with each group rather than with a combined group. Standard errors are published alongside each estimate; small groups can move sharply from one period to the next.