AI Adoption in Software and Tech 2026: Benchmark of 1,544 Professionals

We asked 1,544 people who work in software and tech how they use AI at work. They answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026. Here is how far along they are, what holds them back, what they want from AI next and which tools the most advanced teams use, compared with all 14,452 people in the benchmark.

Key findings

• People in software and tech are further along than everyone else in the benchmark. 22% are leaders, against 14% of all respondents, and 54% are still early.
• The biggest blocker is the skills gap (32%), followed by picking the right tools (26%). More people here name keeping up with how fast AI moves: 8% against 5% across the benchmark.
• Their top goal is to save time (39%). More of them than average want to build an AI product: 13% against 9%.
• Claude is the most used AI tool (83% of those who named a tool), then ChatGPT (75%) and Gemini (48%). Cursor stands out: 6% use it, against 2% of all respondents.
• Leaders lean on Claude. 89% of leaders use it, against 78% of those still early.

How far along people in software and tech are with AI

The largest share of people in software and tech say they are “just exploring” (30%). 13% say AI is used across their company and 9% are rolling it out to their team.

What holds people in software and tech back

We asked for the single biggest blocker. Skills gap leads at 32%. If that is you too: join the free live Claude session.

What they want from AI in the next 90 days

39% want to save time, 28% want to build their AI skills and 13% want to build an AI product.

The AI tools people in software and tech use

People named 3.9 AI tools each on average. These are the 12 most used, as a share of the 1,462 people here who named at least one. Compare any of them in our AI tool database.

What the leaders use differently

Leaders are the 337 people in software and tech whose AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company. They named 4.2 tools each, against 3.7 for the 835 who are still early. These are the clearest differences.

Where they use AI at work

Writing comes first (63%), then personal productivity (63%) and research (53%). People could pick several areas.

Budget for a first AI project

43% are not sure yet. The most common amount named is under $500 (30%).

Who answered

52% decide, recommend or have a say in what their company buys.

Company size

Role

Say in what their company buys

What leaders told The AI Report podcast

“You understand that you are now delegating your work to AI. It's not another tool.”

Roy Mann, Co-founder at monday.com. Most of the shift is mental. A developer on Roy's team was frightened when an agent began shipping UI fixes faster than he could read the requests. A week later he was happy, because he had stopped competing with the agent and started operating it. Treat AI as work you delegate, not as a better search box. Watch or read the episode.

Aaron Mitchell Finegold, Head of Product Marketing at Adobe. Hold a monthly AI demo day. Aaron's team at Adobe sets aside two hours a month for people to show something they built with AI, with leadership on the call. It costs little time, but the recognition gives people a reason to keep learning the latest tools and actually try them. Watch or read the episode.

Jake George and Joe Jepsen, AI agent builders at Agentic Brain. Don't ask AI to do the selling. Use it to coach your sellers. A sales trainer can listen to about four 15-minute calls an hour. An agent that scores every recorded call against your own rules, covering what reps must say, must say when relevant and must not say, lets a trainer review around 20 calls in an hour and coach on the exact steps each rep keeps missing. Watch or read the episode.

Next steps

• Join the free live Claude session. Every Tuesday at 2pm ET, free for every reader.
• Get the five-minute daily briefing. The AI Report covers the AI news that matters at work, every weekday.
• Get a plan built for you. The AI Report Pro turns your benchmark answers into a 90-day AI plan, step by step.

Compare with other groups

The full benchmark: AI at Work Benchmark 2026, with every industry, role and company size side by side.

By industry: Professional services, Healthcare, Education, Marketing and media, Manufacturing, Nonprofits and government, Financial services, Retail and e-commerce, Real estate, Legal.

By role: Executives and founders, Directors, Managers and team leads, Individual contributors, Consultants and advisors, Students and career switchers.

By company size: Solo professionals, Small businesses (2 to 50), Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000), Large enterprises (1,001+).

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 the 1,544 who said they work in software and tech.

• 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 1,462 people here who named at least one tool.
• Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (830 answers here).
• Budget was asked from September 1, 2026 (716 answers here).
• 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.