AI adoption surges past 50%, and it’s changing the software market

New transaction data from 50,000+ businesses shows who's winning, who's losing, and what's next

Key findings

More than half of businesses (50.4%) are now paying for AI services, marking a major milestone and highlighting AI’s unprecedented growth.

Anthropic's share of paid AI customers jumped from 16.7% to 30.6% this quarter, while OpenAI's dipped from 36.8% to 35.2%.

Companies investing the most in AI have more than doubled their revenue since ChatGPT launched, while those with zero AI spend grew 15%.

Summary

AI adoption just hit a new milestone, and the ripple effects are showing up across the broader marketplace. AI-native upstarts are catching up to incumbents in categories like sales execution and product analytics, averaging five-plus percentage points of adoption growth year over year while established players lose ground. Meanwhile, AI seems to be eating up a sizable chunk of freelance spend.

Our Spring 2026 Business Spending Report tracks these shifts through more than $100 billion of anonymized transactions from companies across manufacturing, health care, tech, finance, and more.