OpenAI says AI agents, tools that carry out tasks rather than just answer questions, now make up more than half of the activity among its business customers in the European Union.
The figures come from an analysis by OpenAI’s own economic research team of how its customers use ChatGPT. It is the company’s analysis of its own data, not independent research, and OpenAI has not published the full sample or method.
According to OpenAI, Codex and ChatGPT Work, its agent tools, “now account for more than half of output tokens” among ChatGPT Enterprise customers in its EU sample. Output tokens are units of text the AI produces.
OpenAI’s main findings
- Small businesses: OpenAI says weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work at EU small and medium businesses, which it defines as those with 200 or fewer users, “grew more than eightfold” since May 2026, with growth in every member state.
- Big differences between countries: the share of output tokens from the agent tools ranged “from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania”, OpenAI says.
- Leaders and the rest: OpenAI defines “frontier firms” as the top 10% by output tokens per active user. In September, it says, EU frontier firms produced more than four times as many output tokens per user as typical EU firms.
- Behind the global leaders: frontier firms outside the EU produced more than twice as many output tokens per user as EU frontier firms, according to OpenAI. It says EU firms make up only 10% of frontier firms worldwide.
What OpenAI says it means
“Europe is now in a new era of AI, with tools that can carry out tasks for people,” said Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer. “Yet there is still plenty of room for AI use to grow across the EU.”
OpenAI argues the EU should help businesses move beyond experimenting, give workers AI skills, and make advanced tools more affordable.
What this means
- This is OpenAI’s view of its own customers. The figures cover only OpenAI’s products and were not independently checked.
- Agent use is rising fast, OpenAI says. Its numbers suggest businesses are shifting from chat to task-doing tools.
- OpenAI says Europe lags. It says EU firms use AI less intensively than leading firms elsewhere, a message aimed at EU policymakers.
Sources
- OpenAI, “The EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic”, October 2026. https://openai.com/index/the-eus-next-chapter-in-ai-is-agentic
