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# 17% of respondents at $5B+ firms were still experimenting with AI in 2025, against 39% at the smallest
- URL: https://aiadoption.org/data/ai-deployment-stage-by-company-size/
- Published: 2026-10-19T16:14:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T06:01:34.000Z
- Description: 39% of McKinsey survey respondents at organisations with under $100M in revenue said their AI use was still at the experimenting stage in 2025, against 17% at organisations with $5B or more.
- Author: Manu
- Tags: Data, AI Adoption, #chart, #ai-index-2026, #hub-adoption

17%

of respondents at organisations with $5B or more in revenue said their AI use was at the experimenting stage in 2025 (under $100M: 39%)

At the experimenting stage

Under $100M39%

$1B–4.9B22%

$5B or more17%

## What the chart shows

In McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI survey, the share of respondents who said their organisation’s AI use was at the experimenting stage fell with every step up in revenue: from 39% at organisations with under $100 million to 17% at those with $5 billion or more. The share not using AI fell from 9% to 1%.

Piloting was similar across sizes, between 22% and 32%. The report’s chart also shows the scaling and fully scaled stages, which are not in the published data, so the bars stop short of 100%.

## Key numbers

| Measure                    | Value |
| -------------------------- | ----- |
| Under $100M, experimenting | 39%   |
| $100M–499M, experimenting  | 33%   |
| $5B or more, experimenting | 17%   |
| Under $100M, not using     | 9%    |
| $5B or more, not using     | 1%    |
| $5B or more, piloting      | 31%   |

## How to read it

- Respondents to McKinsey’s State of AI survey (2025), grouped by their organisation’s annual revenue in US dollars; shares of respondents, not of companies.
- The published data has three of the five stages in the report’s chart: not using, experimenting and piloting. Scaling and fully scaled are missing, so bars do not reach 100%.
- Respondents who answered “don’t know” (under 1%, according to the report) are not shown.

**Source:** [McKinsey & Company Survey](https://aiadoption.org/sources/#mckinsey-state-of-ai), 2025, via the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), figure 4.3.6: *Stage of AI deployment by organization revenue, 2025*. Chart and text by AI Adoption.  
Numbers checked against the published data on 20 October 2026.  
[Download the data (CSV)](https://charts.aiadoption.org/ai-index/csv/ai-deployment-stage-by-company-size.csv?ref=aiadoption.org) · [Cite this chart](#source)