AI adoption statistics Australia: is it 12% or 44%?

Twelve per cent of Australian businesses used AI in 2024-25, according to the ABS. The National AI Centre's tracker put SME adoption at 44% in February 2026. Both figures are sound: they survey different populations, ask different questions and count different things. This page reconciles the two, with every figure checked against its primary source.

AI adoption numbers for Australia get quoted more loosely than almost any other business statistic, and the gap between the official figures is wide enough that it looks like someone must be wrong. Nobody is. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, the National AI Centre and the Reserve Bank of Australia each measure something real and each measure something different. Understanding what each number actually counts matters more than picking a favourite.

Key AI adoption statistics for Australia

• 12% of Australian businesses reported using AI in 2024-25, up from roughly 1% a few years earlier — the ABS cites 1% for both its 2021-22 and 2022-23 collections (ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25, released 25 June 2026).
• 35% of large Australian businesses (200 or more employees) used AI in 2024-25, up from 9% in 2021-22, and 22% of medium businesses did, up from 3% (ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25).
• Uptake among small and micro businesses sat at around 11% in 2024-25 (ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25).
• 44% of Australian SMEs reported some level of AI adoption in February 2026, the strongest monthly result in several months; the December 2025 to February 2026 quarter averaged 43%, a marginal decline from 45% the previous quarter (National AI Centre AI adoption tracker, quarterly insights published June 2026).
• AI adoption was highest in information, media and telecommunications at 38%, followed by professional, scientific and technical services and financial and insurance services, both at 24% (ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25).
• 20% of innovation-active businesses used AI in 2024-25, against 6% of non-innovation-active businesses (ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25).
• Two-thirds of the 105 medium-to-large firms the RBA surveyed through its liaison program had adopted AI in some form by mid-2025, but nearly 40% described their use as minimal (RBA Bulletin, Technology Investment and AI: What Are Firms Telling Us?, November 2025).

How many Australian businesses actually use AI?

The most defensible economy-wide answer is the ABS figure: 12% of Australian businesses reported using AI in 2024-25. It comes from the Business Characteristics Survey, which the ABS ran across nearly 7,000 businesses between October 2025 and February 2026 and weighted to represent all employing businesses in the economy. The same release found 46% of businesses were innovation-active, unchanged from 2022-23, so the low AI number is not a story about Australian businesses standing still generally.

The growth behind that 12% is steep. Tom Lay, the ABS head of business statistics, noted that adoption accelerated from the very low rates of 2021-22, before generative AI tools such as ChatGPT were available. Large businesses went from 9% to 35%. Medium businesses went from 3% to 22%. In financial and insurance services, adoption grew to 24 times its 2021-22 level, when it was just 1%. The size gradient is the single most important pattern in the data: the bigger the business, the more likely it uses AI, and micro and small businesses — which dominate the Australian business count — sit at around 11%, which drags the all-business average down toward them.

Where does the 44% figure come from?

The National AI Centre publishes an AI adoption tracker, with fieldwork run by the independent research firm Fifth Quadrant: 400 completed surveys of SME owners and decision-makers every month since May 2024, drawn from accredited research panels and weighted by industry, location and business size. Its February 2026 reading put SME AI adoption at 44%, and the December 2025 to February 2026 quarter at 43% — marginally down from 45% the quarter before. The same edition found the interesting movement inside the adopter group: broad adoption, where AI is embedded across multiple parts of the business, reached its highest level in seven months, while limited one-off use declined.

The tracker is also candid about why the majority still sit out. Around 65% of non-adopting businesses cited distrust of AI decision-making or a preference to keep human control of their processes, 54% said AI is not relevant to their business, and 19% said they simply do not know how to use AI in their business — up two percentage points on the previous quarter.

Why are 12% and 44% both true?

The two headline numbers differ by a factor of nearly four because they are answers to different questions. Three definitional gaps do almost all of the work.

1. 1What counts as using AI. The ABS presented businesses with a list of information and communication technologies and asked which ones the business used — a tick-box, and by the ABS's own description a question not designed to measure intensity or extent of use, but still anchored to actual use in the workplace during 2024-25. The National AI Centre tracker counts any self-described level of adoption, explicitly including limited, one-off use, based on how an owner characterises their own business today.
2. 2Who gets asked. The ABS weights its survey to represent every employing business in Australia, and the count of Australian businesses is dominated by micro and small operators, whose adoption sits around 11%. The tracker surveys an online research panel of SME decision-makers spanning businesses from zero to 500 employees. Accredited panels are weighted to look like the business population, but businesses that join online research panels skew more digitally engaged than the ones that do not.
3. 3When the question was asked. The ABS figure describes the 2024-25 financial year, collected October 2025 to February 2026 and published June 2026. The tracker's 44% is a February 2026 monthly reading. In a market moving this quickly, even a few months of timing difference adds real percentage points.

There is a useful cross-check inside the ABS data itself. Businesses that were innovation-active reported 20% AI use against 6% for those that were not, and innovation-active small businesses hit 19% — almost five times the 4% rate of small businesses that did no innovation activity. In other words, once you narrow the ABS population to businesses that are actively doing something new, the official number starts climbing toward the tracker's territory. Definition and population choice, not measurement error, is the story.

What does the RBA say about AI investment?

The Reserve Bank of Australia added a third lens in its November 2025 Bulletin article, Technology Investment and AI: What Are Firms Telling Us?, based on guided interviews with 105 medium-to-large firms in its liaison program between June and August 2025. Two-thirds of surveyed firms had adopted AI in some form — but nearly 40% described minimal use, typically off-the-shelf digital assistants such as Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT applied to discrete tasks like summarising emails, and around 30% had made more substantive progress. The RBA also observed that adoption was often employee-led rather than employer-led, and that few firms reported material AI-driven productivity gains so far, which it attributed to the limited breadth and depth of adoption to date.

Two forward-looking findings are worth carrying. Surveyed firms expected investment in AI and machine learning to be much higher over the next three years than it has been, and around half expected AI to slightly reduce their headcount over that horizon, all else equal — though large-scale job losses were not expected in the near term. Note the sample: half the firms had 200 to 1,999 employees and over a third had 2,000 or more, so this is a picture of the big end of town, which is exactly why its two-thirds adoption figure lands between the ABS's 35% for large businesses and universal adoption.

Which industries lead AI adoption in Australia?

On the ABS's official measure, information, media and telecommunications leads at 38%, with professional, scientific and technical services and financial and insurance services both at 24%. The fastest growth came from financial and insurance services, up 24-fold from 1% in 2021-22, and arts and recreation services, up 16-fold over the same period. The National AI Centre tracker sees a consistent shape at the SME level: health, education and services sectors lead with more than half of businesses using AI, while construction and agriculture trail with adoption under 30%.

Which number should you quote?

If you are describing the whole Australian economy, quote the ABS: 12% of businesses in 2024-25, sourced to the Characteristics of Australian Business release of June 2026. If you are talking about the SME market's engagement with AI right now, the National AI Centre tracker's 43-44% is legitimate — provided you say it measures self-reported adoption at any level among an SME panel, not verified economy-wide use. If your audience is a board of a mid-sized or large business, the RBA's liaison findings are the closest comparable peer group. What is not defensible is quoting 44% as "almost half of Australian businesses use AI" or 12% as evidence that AI is a fad; both readings strip the definition off the number.

Frontrow's practical read of the data for the businesses it works with — 20 to 200 seats on Microsoft 365 — is that the medium-business trajectory is the one to watch: from 3% to 22% in roughly three years on the strict ABS measure. That cohort is adopting fast enough that within one more survey cycle, non-adoption will be the minority position among medium-sized businesses, and the gap between businesses that adopted deliberately, with governance and training, and businesses where adoption happened employee-by-employee — the pattern the RBA documented — will be where the competitive difference shows.

When do these statistics update next?

• ABS: the Business Characteristics Survey has been redeveloped onto a biennial cycle, and the 2024-25 edition (released 25 June 2026) is the first under the merged framework. The ABS has confirmed the 2026-27 survey will carry additional AI content, which on the two-year cycle points to a release around mid-2028; the ABS lists the next release date as not yet confirmed.
• National AI Centre: Fifth Quadrant collects 400 SME surveys every month, and the centre publishes quarterly insight articles on ai.gov.au. The December 2025 to February 2026 edition was the latest published when this page was checked, with the March to May 2026 quarter the next expected.
• RBA: the November 2025 Bulletin article was a one-off liaison survey, not a scheduled series, though it repeated questions from a 2018 survey and the RBA flagged the themes as ongoing liaison territory.

Statistics checked July 2026 against the sources named above: the ABS Characteristics of Australian Business 2024-25 release and accompanying media release of 25 June 2026, the National AI Centre AI adoption tracker and its December 2025 to February 2026 quarterly insights on ai.gov.au, and the RBA Bulletin article of 13 November 2025. Figures describe the periods stated, not the date of writing, and vendor-published adoption claims have been deliberately excluded because none could be verified against a primary source at the time of checking.