AI is all anyone can talk about right now–and for good reason.
It’s on track to drive change at a scale we haven’t seen since the industrial revolution.
But in a space moving this fast, most stats you find are already out of date. So we did the digging for you.
Here are 80+ current, credible, and 2025-centered AI statistics—no stale sources, no fuzzy citations.
The State of AI in Content Marketing
We surveyed 879 marketers to understand how generative AI is changing content marketing: the workflows, the costs, the results…and the risks.
Download and read the full PDF report here (no email required): The State of AI in Content Marketing.
The global AI market is worth $760B, transforming virtually every industry with faster data analysis, automation, and better operational efficiency. Global AI spend is reaching heady-heights, driven by AI-integrated hardware like servers, smartphones, and PCs. In fact, AI-enabled devices account for 80% of all spending.
S&P tracks and forecasts revenue from hundreds of generative AI software vendors across different categories (text, image, code, video generators, etc.) to calculate total market size and growth projections. This forecasted revenue increase is based on the addition of new AI companies to their tracking list, and not necessarily from existing companies doing better.
| Year | Generative AI Market Revenue (S&P Global) |
|---|---|
| 2024 | $15.87B |
| 2025 | $29.74B |
| 2026 | $44.78B |
| 2027 | $58.98B |
| 2028 | $72.10B |
| 2029 | $84.76B |
How will AI grow over the next 10 years?
AI is being rapidly adopted across all major industries (finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail), supporting everything from industrial manufacturing to household chores.
- The global AI market is expected to hit $3.68 trillion by 2034 (Precedence Research, June 2025)
- The AI market is forecast to expand at a CAGR of 19.2% from 2025 to 2034 (Precedence Research, June 2025)
- AI could drive industrial revolution-level growth rates over the next decade (PWC, April 2025)
- Europe could see near-universal AI adoption by 2030 (AWS, February 2025)
- The global AI chip market is expected to exceed $400B by 2030 (RFID Journal, June 2025)
According to PWC, AI has the potential to boost global GDP by 15+ percentage points by 2035, as the global economy is reshaped–matching the growth increment we saw with 19th century industrialization.
KPMG found that 2 in 3 people use AI tools for personal, work, or study purposes, based on a survey of 48,000 people across 47 countries,
This is one of the most wide-ranging studies into AI adoption and attitudes.
To put that into context, only 31% of UK adults consume the recommended five portions of fruit and veg every day. That means we are twice as likely to engage with AI, than we are to eat a balanced diet
Who is using AI most?
The data shows some clear patterns about which demographics are taking advantage of AI…and which aren’t.
- Millennials are the most active generation of AI users. 62% self-report high levels of AI expertise. Based on a global survey on AI based on 1,491 participants across 101 countries, millennials use AI most (McKinsey, March 2025)
- 71% of young adults report moderate to high levels of AI knowledge, compared to 33% of older adults. Based on a global survey of 48,340 people across 47 countries, 2 out of 3 young adults are confident using AI (Melbourne Business School, April 2025)
- 58% of employees intentionally use AI at work (Melbourne Business School, April 2025)
- 9 out of 10 of students use AI, up from 53% from 2024 (The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Kortext, February 2025)
What are people using AI for?
From classrooms to operating rooms, AI is already behind real-world solutions, making processes faster, decisions smarter, and systems more efficient.
- 50% of teachers now use AI for lesson planning and research—making it one of the most common classroom AI applications in 2025 (May, AllAboutAI)
- 42–45% of U.S. households own at least one AI-powered smart home device (e.g., voice assistants, smart thermostats), integrating AI into daily routines like lighting, climate control, and security. (Axios, February 2025)
- 84% of people use AI tools to explore and understand new concepts and ideas—whether researching hobbies, upskilling, or planning projects. (Techresearchs, March 2025)
- 20% of keyhole surgeries performed in NHS hospitals in the UK are carried out using robot-assisted (AI-powered) technology—this is expected to rise sharply in the coming years. (The Times, June 2025)
Artificial intelligence is not just a novelty, it’s an economic powerhouse in the making, throttling startup revenues and breathing new life into incumbents ¹ ².
Read on for some of the latest AI business statistics.
How many companies use AI in 2025?
Every company is deploying AI in some way, shape, or form.
- 100% of industries are embracing AI–including atypical ones like mining and agriculture. According to data from 24 countries, across ~1B job postings, and 80 industry sectors–every industry is using AI (PWC Global AI Jobs Barometer, June 2025)
- Telecommunications is the industry with the greatest AI adoption, scoring 34/100, followed by Pharmaceuticals (30), and Banking & Finance (29). Based on the HG AI Maturity Index of 1,000 organisations–analyzing cloud and data center product adoption, usage, and spend–telecommunications is the most AI mature industry (HG Insights, February 2025)
- Global corporate investment in AI reached $252B–growing thirteenfold since 2014 (Stanford HAI Index, April 2025)
- 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments in the next 3 years (McKinsey, January 2025)
- AI companies reach SaaS-level revenues a year faster (Tech Crunch, February 2025)
- Only 19% of C-suite execs say revenues have increased more than 5% (McKinsey, January 2025)
- Only 25% of companies are seeing ROI from AI, based on a global survey of more than 1,800 execs (BCG AI Radar Boston Consulting Group, January 2025)
- 74% of companies face critical barriers to scaling their AI solutions (World Economic Forum, January 2025)
AI startups are growing faster than SaaS ever did. Stripe found that the top 100 AI companies (by revenue) were able to reach $5 million annual revenue in 24 months in 2024, compared to the top 100 SaaS companies taking 37 months in 2018 to reach the same milestone.
| Chatbot | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 79.83 |
| Perplexity | 11.81 |
| Microsoft Copilot | 5.17 |
| Google Gemini | 1.94 |
| Deepseek | 0.8 |
| Claude | 0.44 |
Did you know?
OpenAI has reached 400 million WAU–up 33% in less than 3 months. That is ~5% of the world’s entire population!
AI content
Most new content online now has some form of AI fingerprint on it.
- 74% of new web content is created with generative AI (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- Only 26% of new web content is entirely human-created (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 87% of marketers use AI to help create content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
People using AI publish 42% more content per month than those not using AI (Ahrefs, May 2025) - 97% of companies have a review process for AI content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 80% of marketers manually review AI content for accuracy (Ahrefs, May 2025)
Only 4% of respondents publish primarily “pure” AI content (Ahrefs, May 2025) - Human-written content costs 4.7× more than AI-generated content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 51% of companies plan to increase their spend on AI content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 38% of marketers are saving money on writers by using AI (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- Companies spend an average of $188 per month on AI tools (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 84% of companies do not disclose the use of AI in their content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 87% of companies use AI primarily to create blog post content (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- ChatGPT is the most common model for content creation, used by 44% of respondents (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- Most people use foundational LLMs rather than LLM wrappers for content tasks (77% vs 23%) (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- The top three use cases for AI are brainstorming (76%), outlining (73%), and improving content (67%) (Ahrefs, May 2025)
AI search
Google’s AI search features are upending SEO, and transforming search engines into conversational interfaces.
- AI Overviews have reduced clicks by 34.5% (Ahrefs, April 2025)
- According to Google, AI Overviews (AIOs) had over 1.5 billion users a month in Q1 2025. That would be 18.3% of all the people on the planet or 26.6% of all internet users. (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 26% of brands have zero mentions in AI Overviews. (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- AI Overviews show up for 16% of all search results in the US (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- The top 50 domains appearing in AI Overviews account for 28.9% of all citations (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 54.61% of all Google searches are showing AI Overviews. (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- 71.67% of AI Overview search results aren’t monetized, displaying no CPC data (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- Brand web mentions show the strongest correlation (0.664) with AI Overview brand visibility. (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- AI Overviews have grown by 116% since the March Core Update (Ahrefs, May 2025)
- Brands in the top 25% for web mentions earn over 10× more AI Overview mentions than the next quartile (Ahrefs, June 2025)
- Brand anchors correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.527 (Spearman) (Ahrefs, June 2025) ahrefs.com
- Brand search volume correlates with AI Overview visibility at 0.392 (Spearman) (Ahrefs, June 2025)
| Search factor | Correlation with AI Overview mentions |
|---|---|
| Branded web mentions | 0.664 |
| Branded anchors | 0.527 |
| Branded search volume | 0.392 |
| DR (Domain Rating) | 0.326 |
| Number of referring domains | 0.295 |
| Branded traffic | 0.274 |
| Number of backlinks | 0.218 |
| Ad traffic | 0.216 |
| Ad cost | 0.215 |
| URL rating | 0.18 |
| Number of site pages | 0.17 |
Wrapping up
The AI revolution isn’t coming—it’s here.
The numbers don’t lie. AI has gone mainstream faster than almost any technology in history.
This is a market that’s worth $758B in 2025 and is racing toward $1.8T by 2030.
The companies and people who get ahead of the AI curve will thrive. Those who dither will be playing catch-up–if they even manage to survive.
Further reading
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