- Michael Allison, CFA
- Sep 20
- 2 min read
📈  Chart of the Week 9/22/2025
By Michael Allison, CFA
AI Adoption: Don't Panic Just Yet
I found this week’s Chart especially interesting and worth highlighting. It shows that AI usage among larger companies — defined as those with more than 250 employees — has actually begun to decline. 😳
According to Torsten Sløk, Apollo’s Chief Economist, AI adoption in businesses with more than 250 employees dropped to 9% as of the second and third weeks of August — down from a peak of 15% in the first two weeks of June.
Even more telling: only 14% of companies surveyed in August expected to use AI in their businesses over the next six months, compared with 19% in June.
Is This the End of the Great AI Revolution?
At first glance, this might seem like cause for a hair-on-fire freakout.
Is it over already?!?! OMG!!
Not so fast.
The Logic of a Technology Rollout
This is exactly what you’d expect with a technology as transformative as AI.
Whenever something this disruptive comes along, there’s a rush to embrace it. Senior management at large companies allocate significant resources to deployment — but when there isn’t an immediate return on investment, they start to rethink their commitment.
This doesn’t mean the technology isn’t real. It means that large organizations — with entrenched systems and processes — need time, patience, and persistence to integrate something this big into their operations.
Why Small Companies Win Early
Smaller companies are typically younger and more nimble, with fewer bureaucratic processes slowing their ability to experiment and iterate.
History tells us that innovation usually comes from these kinds of firms. There’s no reason to think the AI economy — or the companies driving it — will be any different.
💡 Bottom line: This isn’t the end of the AI revolution — it’s just the end of the honeymoon phase for large companies. Expect the next wave of innovation to come from smaller, faster-moving firms that can show real ROI, paving the way for a more sustained enterprise adoption cycle later.
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