The 2026 State of AI for Business Report surveyed more than 2,100 professionals across functions, industries, and company sizes about how they're using AI, what's working, and what keeps them up at night.
It's the sixth annual edition of SmarterX's flagship research, and this year it expanded beyond marketing for the first time to capture a truly cross-functional view.
The findings reveal a widening gap between what individuals are doing with AI and what their organizations are ready for, and a workforce that's growing more capable and more anxious at the same time.
Read our top 10 takeaways below, and fill out the form to the right to get access to the complete 2026 data.
1. The workforce expects AI to eliminate more jobs than it creates (by an overwhelming margin).
Seventy-one percent of respondents believe more jobs will be eliminated by AI than created, compared to just 13% who expect net job creation. This belief is remarkably consistent across every role and seniority level. Yet when asked about their own role, only 20% express concern.
The disconnect is notable: The workforce broadly expects disruption. They just don’t think it will happen to them — a tension that may shape how organizations need to communicate AI’s impact going forward.
2. AI is now essential to business success, with near-universal agreement.
Seventy-four percent of respondents say AI is “critically important” or “very important” to their success in the next 12 months, with 39% selecting “critically important” alone. CEOs and founders feel this most intensely: 89% rate AI as critically or very important.
3. The biggest barriers to AI adoption aren’t technical, they’re human.
Top adoption barriers share a common thread: The pace of change is outrunning people’s capacity to absorb it.
A lack of education and training (38%) and a lack of awareness or understanding (35%) remain the most-cited barriers to AI adoption. Lack of time (30%) — a new response option this year — landed immediately among the top barriers, alongside fear or mistrust of AI (29%).
Taken together, the top four barriers all point in the same direction: Professionals aren’t struggling with access to AI tools or budget to buy them. They’re struggling with the pace and volume of what they need to learn and integrate, faster than their schedules and their organizations currently allow.
4. More than half of professionals have moved past experimentation.
Individual adoption has tipped. Fifty-three percent of respondents say they’re in the Integration or Transformation phases of AI adoption, meaning they’ve moved past testing tools into embedding AI in their workflows or reimagining how they work entirely.
Only 12% remain in the earliest Curiosity or Understanding phases. (In our 2025 State of Marketing AI Report, 43% of respondents were in Integration or Transformation, suggesting meaningful forward movement.)
5. Organizations are falling behind their own employees.
While individuals race ahead, only 25% of organizations have reached the Scaling phase. The largest share (47%) is still in Piloting, and 28% remain in Understanding.
Among respondents who are personally in Integration or Transformation, 62% report their organization has not yet reached Scaling, a structural gap between individual capability and organizational infrastructure.
6. Nearly half the workforce is not yet sold on AI.
Fifty-two percent of respondents describe their overall sentiment toward AI as positive. But 48% are neutral, negative, or unsure how they feel. This is not a workforce that is fully bought in.
7. Only 13% of organizations have the governance foundations to scale AI.
Only 29% have an AI roadmap. Thirty-nine percent have an AI council. Forty-eight percent have a generative AI policy. Forty-eight percent have an AI ethics policy. And just 13% have all four governance foundations in place.
A third of respondents (32%) report their organization has none of these.
8. AI training is up sharply but still isn’t reaching the majority.
The majority of respondents still lack training: 32% say no training exists, 18% say it’s in development, and 3% aren’t sure.
When asked what AI topics they want to learn, the top answers are integrating AI tools into existing workflows (58%), using AI agents (51%), and
building no-code assistants (45%).
Prompting (once a hot topic) was mentioned by just 15% of workers. The workforce has moved past fundamentals and is asking for more education around operational AI skills.
9. ChatGPT dominates small firms. Copilot dominates enterprise. The platform war is splitting by company size.
Overall, 59% of respondents say their organization provides ChatGPT.
But platform preference depends on company size: Seventy-three percent use ChatGPT at small firms (up to $1M) while the same percentage use Microsoft Copilot at large enterprises ($1B+). Claude (37%) and Gemini (42%) are significant but still trail the leaders.
10. CEOs and founders report being dramatically ahead of everyone else in personal AI adoption.
Sixty-five percent of CEOs/Founders/ Presidents are in the Integration or Transformation phases, compared to 53% of Directors and 48% of Managers.
Access the full report now.
Access Past Reports
2025 State of Marketing AI Report
2024 State of Marketing AI Report
2023 State of Marketing AI Report
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