Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark: nine questions about their role, their company and how they use AI at work. This page shows what they told us, and how each industry, role and company size compares. Every group has its own page with more detail.
Key findings
- Most people are still early. 63% are just exploring or testing a few tools. Only 14% have AI rolled out to their team or across their company.
- The biggest blocker is picking the right tools (32%), almost tied with the skills gap (30%). Budget is named by only 6%.
- Software and tech is furthest along (22% leaders), and marketing and media has the furthest to go (10%).
- Bigger companies are further along. 22% of people at companies with more than 1,000 staff are leaders, against 8% of solo professionals.
- Leaders lean on Claude. 78% of leaders use it, against 62% of people who are still early. ChatGPT goes the other way: 75% of leaders against 80% of early adopters.
How far along people are with AI
Each bar shows how far along one group is, from just exploring to AI used across the company. The bigger the company, the bigger the share of leaders.
- Just exploring
- Testing a few tools
- Using 1 to 3 tools for real
- Rolling out to their team
- Used across the company
- Helping others with AI
By industry
Sorted by the share of leaders. Software and tech leads; marketing and media trails. Select an industry for its full page.
| Group | People | Early | Leaders | Biggest blocker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software and tech | 1,544 | 54% | 22% | Skills gap |
| Manufacturing | 1,293 | 62% | 17% | Picking the right tools |
| Financial services | 1,178 | 64% | 16% | Picking the right tools |
| Legal | 394 | 62% | 16% | Picking the right tools |
| Real estate | 727 | 65% | 14% | Picking the right tools |
| Healthcare | 1,603 | 63% | 13% | Picking the right tools |
| Professional services | 2,535 | 62% | 13% | Picking the right tools |
| Education | 1,423 | 65% | 12% | Picking the right tools |
| Nonprofits and government | 1,226 | 67% | 12% | Picking the right tools |
| Retail and e-commerce | 903 | 67% | 12% | Picking the right tools |
| Marketing and media | 1,343 | 67% | 10% | Picking the right tools |
By role
Directors (18%) and executives and founders (16%) are the most likely to be leaders. Students and career switchers (82% early) and individual contributors (75%) are the most likely to be just starting.
| Group | People | Early | Leaders | Biggest blocker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Executives and founders | 3,313 | 55% | 16% | Picking the right tools |
| Directors | 2,471 | 55% | 18% | Skills gap |
| Managers and team leads | 2,990 | 63% | 14% | Picking the right tools |
| Individual contributors | 3,244 | 75% | 9% | Picking the right tools |
| Consultants and advisors | 1,892 | 62% | 13% | Picking the right tools |
| Students and career switchers | 541 | 82% | 10% | Picking the right tools |
By company size
| Group | People | Early | Leaders | Biggest blocker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo professionals | 5,076 | 74% | 8% | Picking the right tools |
| Small businesses (2 to 50) | 3,718 | 61% | 14% | Picking the right tools |
| Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000) | 2,840 | 57% | 17% | Picking the right tools |
| Large enterprises (1,001+) | 2,817 | 53% | 22% | Skills gap |
What holds people back
We asked for the single biggest blocker. Picking the right tools and the skills gap together account for 62% of answers.
What people want from AI in the next 90 days
The most used AI tools at work
Share of the 13,283 people who named at least one tool. People named 3.3 tools each on average. Compare tools in our AI tool database.
What the leaders use differently
Leaders named 3.8 tools each, against 3.0 for people who are still early. These are the clearest differences.
| Tool | Leaders | Early | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | 78% | 62% | +16 pts |
| Microsoft Copilot | 18% | 9% | +9 pts |
| Power BI | 12% | 5% | +6 pts |
| Perplexity | 19% | 14% | +4 pts |
| Salesforce | 9% | 5% | +4 pts |
| HubSpot | 6% | 3% | +3 pts |
| Figma | 5% | 2% | +3 pts |
| ChatGPT | 75% | 80% | -5 pts |
- Share of each group who use the tool. Leaders: 1,936 people, early: 8,132 people.
Where people use AI at work
- Asked July 20 to August 31, 2026: 7,558 answers.
Budget for a first AI project
- Asked from September 1, 2026: 6,908 answers.
What leaders told The AI Report podcast
“We figured that it was better to go more narrow and deep and really scale agents on what is our core process, which is recruitment.”
Denis Machuel, CEO at The Adecco Group. Adecco started with AI pilots scattered across the business, then switched to going narrow and deep: it picked its core process, recruitment, and scaled agents there first. If your pilots are spread thin, choose the one workflow that drives the business and go deep on it. Watch or read the episode.
“Go find those really painful journeys in your enterprise today.”
Yasmeen Ahmad, Managing Director, Product Management, Data and AI Cloud at Google Cloud. Start where the work is most painful. Look for workflows that are slow, manual and laborious, or work you skip entirely because the effort is too high, like reviewing a thousand documents. Legal tech firm Inspira used this approach on legal document analysis and cut its manual workflow by 80 percent, with people still reviewing the output. Watch or read the episode.
How do you compare?
Answer the same nine quick questions as these 14,452 people. See which of five AI types you are, how you compare with readers like you, and get a free 30-day AI roadmap by email.
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About this data
These numbers come from The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark. Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people completed it. This page covers all of them.
- Answers are self-reported. People chose their own industry, role, company size and stage.
- “Early” means just exploring or testing a few tools. “Leaders” means AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company.
- People could pick more than one tool, so tool shares add up to more than 100%. Tool shares are out of the 13,283 people here who named at least one tool.
- Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (7,558 answers here).
- Budget was asked from September 1, 2026 (6,908 answers here).
- The role question changed on September 1, 2026. We grouped the old and new answers into six role groups.
- Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
- We never publish individual answers. A group only gets a page with 100 or more people, and we only compare groups of 30 or more.
- People who take an AI newsletter's quiz are more interested in AI than the average worker, so read these numbers as a benchmark of people actively working on AI, not a national average.
Last updated November 2, 2026. To cite this page: The AI Report, AI at Work Benchmark 2026, theaireport.ai/tools/benchmark.