Understanding the use of AI among small businesses

Published on September 23, 2026

Small businesses have historically lagged behind larger enterprises in adopting new technologies due to resource constraints and integration challenges. As artificial intelligence (AI) tools became widely accessible in recent years, questions emerged about whether this technology would follow similar patterns and whether small businesses would be able to benefit from it. Using de-identified Chase Business Banking transaction data, this report—the first in our Small Business in the Age of AI research series—tracks payments to AI services made by small businesses from 2019 through 2025, providing an objective measure of adoption behavior across the small business sector.

This report examines when small businesses adopt AI, how their spending evolves, and which firm characteristics are associated with adoption. Our transaction-based methodology captures actual purchasing behavior across the full spectrum of AI technologies—from specialized tools to general-purpose services—revealing adoption patterns and spending dynamics that would be difficult to discern in survey-based research that relies on self-reported usage. We establish a set of findings:

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