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Monitoring AI Adoption in the US Economy, Accessible Data
Figure 1. Features of the AI Investment Boom
Top row: Capital Expenditure at Major Technology Firms. The left plot presents aggregate quarterly capex at Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle. The right plot shows capex for the same firms for the four quarters ending in a given period, expressed as a percentage of seasonally-adjusted and annualized nominal GDP. Capex reached $131 billion in Q4 2025 on a quarterly basis and $412 billion for the year, representing about 1.31 percent of U.S. GDP. Middle row: Investments in Leading AI Labs. The left plot captures new capital raised by Anthropic and OpenAI between 2023 and 2025. The right plot captures post-money valuations based on funding rounds for the two firms in the same years. Anthropic and OpenAI raised $44 and $58 billion over the period and were valued at $350 and $500 billion at year-end 2025. Bottom row: Growth in Market Capitalization of AI Chip Firms. The left plot shows that the market capitalizations of AMD (red dotted line), Broadcom (gray dashed line), and Nvidia (solid blue line) grew by 179 percent, 636 percent, and 975 percent, respectively, between the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 and year-end 2025. The right plot shows that their collective share of the S&P 500 market capitalization was 11.2 percent at the end of 2025, down from a high of 12.4 percent in October 2025.
Note: Top row - The capex numbers do not include leases. Middle row (left plot) – Key identifies in order from left to right. Middle row (right plot) - Prior to OpenAI’s December 2025 capital raise, a secondary share sale completed in October 2025 enabled employees to sell shares at a $500 billion valuation. Bottom row (right plot) – Key identifies in order from top to bottom.
Source: S&P Capital IQ Pro; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, retrieved from FRED
Figure 2. Trends in AI Adoption
The figure presents trends in AI adoption across the U.S. The left plot tracks adoption by U.S. businesses as measured by the Census Bureau's biweekly Business Trends and Outlook Survey on a 4-period moving average basis. The legacy time series is depicted to the left of the vertical dashed line. Adoption (solid gray line) and planned adoption (blue dashed line) rates grew by about 6 and 7 percentage points, respectively, over the legacy series with most recent observations of about 10 and 14 percent. The gray circle (adoption) and blue square (planned adoption) to the right of the dashed line depict the moving average for the four observations in the new series leading up to year-end 2025, which stand at about 18 and 21 percent. The right plot presents trend in non-work (solid gray line) and work-related (blue dashed line) GenAI adoption by adults and workers in the U.S. from August 2024 through November 2025 based on the quarterly Real-Time Population Survey. The series have risen from 36 and 33 percent, respectively, to 50 and 41 percent.
Note: In November 2025, the Census Bureau revised the BTOS AI questions to focus on a firm’s use of AI in “any of its business functions,” rather than in “producing goods or services.” Planned adoption refers to expected adoption over the next six months. See the Appendix for detailed question wording.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (left); Real-Time Population Survey (right)
Figure 3. AI Adoption and Firm Size: Distribution across Employee Size Classes
The left plot presents trends in AI adoption by U.S. businesses based on the BTOS for four employee size classes: 1-49 (gray line and circle), 50-99 (blue dashed line and square), 100-249 (dark blue dotted line and triangle), and 250+ (red dash-dot line and diamond) enterprises. In the legacy series, adoption was highest in the largest group and comparable for the other three groups. On average, the first four surveys of the new BTOS series show a stronger association between adoption and firm size. The right bar plot presents AI adoption (gray bars) and LLM adoption (blue bars) for the same employee size cohorts, as estimated in the November 2025 SBU. Adoption patterns are similar to the BTOS, but there is more comparability among the smaller cohorts, especially for LLM adoption.
Note: Left plot - For comparability with the SBU, the left plot aggregates the first four employee count-based firm size cohorts published in the BTOS data into a single group (1-49 employees) using average adoption rates of the constituent groups. Right plot - Key identifies in order from left to right.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (left); Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Survey of Business Uncertainty (right)
Figure 4. AI Adoption across Industries
The left plot depicts trends in AI adoption by U.S. businesses based on the BTOS for professional services (gray line and circle), finance and insurance (blue dashed line and square), health care and social assistance (dark blue dotted line and triangle), manufacturing (red dash-dot line and diamond), and retail trade (orange long dashed line and pentagon) firms. Adoption rates are highest in the professional services and financial sectors, and growth has been strongest in the latter. The right plot tracks work-related GenAI usage reported by individuals in the RPS for the professional services (solid gray line), finance and insurance (blue dashed line), health care and social assistance (dark blue dotted line), manufacturing (red dash-dot line), and retail trade (orange long dashed line) sectors. Usage is highest in the financial and professional services sectors. Year-on-year growth has been strongest in the manufacturing sector.
Note: The industries depicted in the figure represent four of the top five by total output and three of the top five by total employment.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (left); Real-Time Population Survey (right)