The state of enterprise AI

The state of enterprise AI | OpenAI

December 17, 2025

The state of enterprise AI

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Foreword

At OpenAI, our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity, and helping enterprises solve problems is central to this mission.

The majority of economically valuable activity takes place inside organizations, where innovation translates directly into improved outcomes for workers, customers, and other stakeholders. Enterprise problems also present the hardest technical challenges for frontier intelligence, requiring reliability, safety, and security at scale. The revenue generated from solving these problems can help fund broad, free access to powerful AI for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

For much of the past three years, the visible impact of AI has been most apparent among consumers. However, the history of general purpose technologies—from steam engines to semiconductors—shows that significant economic value is created after firms translate underlying capabilities into scaled use cases. Enterprise AI now appears to be entering this phase, as many of the world’s largest and most complex organizations are starting to use AI as core infrastructure.

More than 1 million business customers now use OpenAI’s tools. This report brings together evidence from de-identified and aggregated enterprise usage data and a variety of other sources to provide a grounded view of how AI is being deployed inside organizations today.

2025 report

Four key findings stand out

Enterprise usage is scaling, with deeper workflow integration. ChatGPT message volume grew 8x and API reasoning token consumption per organization increased 320x year-over-year, demonstrating that more enterprises are using AI and their intensity of usage has increased.

Enterprises that leverage AI are experiencing measurable productivity and business impact. Enterprise users report saving 40–60 minutes per day and being able to complete new technical tasks such as data analysis and coding. Case studies indicate AI is contributing to important outcomes such as revenue growth, improved customer experience, and shorter product-development cycles.

Enterprise growth is global and rapidly accelerating across industries. Over the past six months, international adoption has surged as organizations worldwide deepen their use of AI, complementing continued strong momentum in the U.S. In the past 12 months, the median sector grew by more than 6x, with the technology sector leading the pack at 11x.

A widening gap is emerging between leaders and laggards. Frontier workers are sending 6x more messages and frontier firms are sending 2x as many messages per seat than the median enterprise. There’s a substantive gap in the likelihood to utilize the most capable AI tools today, despite broad availability of these tools. Models are capable of far more than most organizations have embedded into workflows, and this presents an opportunity for firms.

“Looking ahead, the next phase of enterprise AI will be shaped by stronger performance on economically valuable tasks, better understanding of organizational context, and a shift from asking models for outputs to delegating complex, multi-step workflows. As these capabilities mature, we expect organizations to not only improve efficiency, but discover new ways to serve customers and deliver value.

The findings in this report represent early signs of how AI is beginning to reshape the modern enterprise. As enterprise AI evolves, OpenAI will continue to share real-world evidence on how AI is influencing firms, workers, and the broader economy.”

—Ronnie Chatterji, Chief Economist OpenAI

Introduction

###### Over the past three years, enterprises have integrated AI systems across a wide range of use cases and operational workflows.

These deployments provide insights on how AI is shaping work, particularly in environments where accuracy standards are high, workflows are complex, and improvements in productivity or decision quality have direct economic outcomes. Because much of the world’s economically valuable activity occurs inside firms, enterprise adoption patterns provide a clear signal of where AI is delivering value today and where it will likely do so in the future.

The scale and diversity of OpenAI’s more than 1 million business customers provides a distinctive view into this shift. This report summarizes key findings from across OpenAI’s enterprise customer base, and what those patterns suggest about the current state and trajectory of enterprise AI. By examining how adoption varies across industries and functions, the analysis also highlights where AI is becoming deeply embedded in firms, and where gaps are emerging.

###### Findings are based on two primary data sources

Real-world usage data from enterprise customers of OpenAI.

An OpenAI survey of 9,000 workers across almost 100 enterprises documenting patterns of AI adoption.

All analyses in this report are based on de-identified, aggregated enterprise usage data. Message content was classified using automated systems, and no OpenAI employee reviewed individual enterprise, business, or API customer data as part of this analysis.

Enterprise AI usage is accelerating and deepening

Over the past year, enterprise AI adoption has increased substantially as organizations incorporate AI into repeatable, multi-step workflows across functions and business units. OpenAI now serves more than 7 million ChatGPT workplace seats, and ChatGPT Enterprise seats have increased approximately 9x year-over-year.

Since November 2024, weekly Enterprise messages have grown approximately 8x in aggregate, with the average worker sending 30% more messages. This growth reflects both more frequent use of ChatGPT and a deepening in the intensity of use.

Two shifts underscore the deepening integration of AI into core enterprise workflows.

Custom GPTs and Projects are enabling deeper workflow integration

GPTs and Projects are configurable interfaces built on ChatGPT that can be tailored with instructions, knowledge, and custom actions, enabling workers to execute repeatable, multi-step tasks.

Weekly users of Custom GPTs and Projects have increased by approximately 19x year-to-date. In recent months, approximately 20% of all Enterprise messages were processed via a Custom GPT or Project. The most widely deployed GPTs either codify institutional knowledge into reusable assistants…