In 2025, 8.9% of Greek enterprises with ten or more employees used at least one AI technology, according to Eurostat. That places Greece 25th of the 28 countries in the table, at 44% of the EU average of 19.9%. Over the same year the EU figure rose by nearly half while the Greek figure fell from 9.8%. The average hides a split: Greek companies with 250 or more employees went from 24.3% to 37.6%, while companies with 10 to 49 employees went down. Headlines claiming that seven in ten Greek firms use AI are counting something else, usually one experiment with a chatbot.
How many Greek companies actually use AI?
Between 8% and 9% of Greek companies with ten or more staff use AI, depending on how the question is worded. Three official figures exist for 2025, all from the same national survey:
- 8.9% use at least one of eight named AI technologies (Eurostat, isoc_eb_ai).
- 8.2%, or 3,868 of 47,246 companies with internet access, use AI for at least one of seven business purposes (ELSTAT, December 2025).
- 8.1% use AI for at least one of those purposes, counted over all companies with ten or more staff (Eurostat).
None of the three is wrong. They differ only in whether the question named technologies or purposes and in what the denominator was. Anyone quoting "8%" should say which one. Companies with fewer than ten people, which are most Greek businesses, are not in these surveys at all: a four-person firm that uses ChatGPT every day does not appear anywhere in the official number.
Why do some headlines say 70% or even 88%?
Some headlines say 70% or 88% because they measure a different thing. The European Central Bank asked euro area firms about the extent of their AI use in late 2025 and published four answers from the same respondents (ECB Economic Bulletin):
- any activity at all, including very infrequent or experimental use: 71%;
- significant or moderate use: 38%;
- early stage, very infrequent or experimental: 33%;
- significant use only: 7%.
Every "seven in ten firms use AI" story is the first line. The 7% almost never travels, yet it sits within about a point of the Greek official 8.2%, which is exactly what you would expect once the thresholds match. The 88% figure often quoted from McKinsey's State of AI comes from a self-selected online panel of about two thousand respondents, and the same survey found only about 6% attributing more than 5% of their operating profit to AI. I graded twenty of the most-cited AI adoption statistics this way in The adoption gap.
Where does Greece rank in Europe on AI adoption?
Greece ranks 25th of 28 on enterprise AI adoption in 2025, between Cyprus and Bulgaria. The top of the table is Denmark at 42.0%, Finland at 37.8% and Sweden at 35.0%. The EU average is 19.9%. The bottom four are Greece at 8.9%, Bulgaria at 8.6%, Poland at 8.4% and Romania at 5.2%. Every country answered the same question, in the same window, under the same regulation, so the ranking is not a definitional artefact.
Is Greek business falling behind, or splitting in two?
Greek business is splitting in two. Large Greek companies are adopting AI at roughly the pace of large companies everywhere, and small ones are moving backwards, which drags the national average down.
| Company size | Greece 2024 | Greece 2025 | EU 2024 | EU 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 or more employees | 9.8% | 8.9% | 13.5% | 19.9% |
| 10 to 49 | 8.2% | 7.3% | 11.2% | 17.0% |
| 50 to 249 | 15.9% | 15.2% | 21.0% | 30.4% |
| 250 or more | 24.3% | 37.6% | 41.2% | 55.0% |
Source: Eurostat isoc_eb_ai, enterprises with ten or more persons employed. The gap between Greece and the EU average widened from 3.7 to 11.0 percentage points in one year. The fair reading is not "Greek business is not adopting AI". It is that the firms with the capacity to adopt are doing so, and the small firms that make up most of the economy are not yet.
What do Greek companies use AI for?
Greek companies use AI mostly for IT security. ELSTAT's 2025 release counts the companies using AI for each purpose, and a company can appear in more than one line:
- ICT security: 2,280 companies;
- marketing or sales: 1,150;
- business administration: 1,113;
- production or service processes: 902;
- research, development or innovation: 754;
- accounting or finance: 521;
- logistics: 110.
Security is about twice marketing and sales and twenty times logistics. In most Greek firms, AI has so far arrived inside a product someone bought, such as a security suite, rather than as a decision to change how work gets done. The functions where AI agents pay back fastest, accounting, logistics and customer service, are the least adopted.
What does this mean for a Greek SME in 2026?
For a Greek SME in 2026 the numbers mean three things:
- You are not late, you are early. If you run a company of ten to fifty people and use AI in one real process, you are ahead of more than nine in ten of your peers by the official measure. Do not let an 88% slide rush a budget decision.
- Your large competitors and suppliers are moving. A 13-point jump in one year among Greek firms with 250 or more staff means the companies you sell to or buy from will start expecting faster answers and cleaner data.
- Start where the hours are. The under-adopted functions, invoices, bookkeeping, customer questions and logistics, are exactly where one well-built system saves the most time. One queue, measured before and after, is a better first project than a company-wide AI strategy.
What an AI agent is and when one is worth building is covered in agentic AI explained, and what a model can and cannot do in what a large language model is.
How should you read an AI statistic before planning against it?
Ask six questions before you plan against any AI adoption number: who was asked, how they were selected, what exactly was counted, over what time window, who paid for the survey, and whether the method is published. In my review only seven of twenty widely-cited statistics published their question wording, and six of twenty came from organisations selling what they measured. A number that fails the first three questions describes the publisher's audience, not your market.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of Greek companies use artificial intelligence?
About 8% to 9% of Greek companies with ten or more employees in 2025: 8.9% by Eurostat's technology question and 8.2% by ELSTAT's purpose question. Companies with fewer than ten employees are not measured.
Is AI adoption in Greece growing?
Among large companies, yes, quickly: from 24.3% to 37.6% between 2024 and 2025. Among companies of ten to forty-nine people it fell from 8.2% to 7.3%, which pulled the national average down from 9.8% to 8.9%.
Does employees using ChatGPT count as AI adoption?
Only if the survey asks about it and the company is in scope. The official surveys ask whether the enterprise uses AI technologies or uses AI for business purposes, and they cover only companies with ten or more employees.
If you want to know where AI would save your company the most hours, send me the process that costs you the most time. The department-by-department options are on AI for every department.