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The AI revolution takes hold

Europe stands at the dawn of an AI revolution. Every minute, somewhere across the continent, more than five businesses adopt AI for the first time. This remarkable pace equates to nearly three million businesses across the continent in the past year.[1]

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This isn't just steady growth - it's a transformation happening at breakneck speed. AI adoption has grown by 27% in only twelve months, marking a 68% rate of growth since the first release of this report three years ago. Close to half of all European businesses have now begun to harness AI's potential, putting universal adoption within reach by 2030.

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This outpaces the early growth rate of adoption of game-changing technologies like mobile phones in the 2000s[2].

Emerging divides: Two-tier AI adoption

Beneath these headline figures lies a more complex story. Our research reveals two distinct paths emerging in Europe's AI journey:

01.

 

In startup hubs from Nice to Naples, companies are reimagining entire industries. Take Latitudo 40, an Italian company harnessing AI to address one of the most challenging problems of our time and empowering cities to tackle climate challenges. These companies are not simply using AI – they’re being built around it, using the transformative technology to create entirely new products and business models that would have been impossible just years ago.

02.

 

Meanwhile, in corporate headquarters across the continent, a different pattern emerges. While adoption numbers among large businesses are promising, many larger enterprises remain focused on incremental gains - using AI to streamline existing processes and to drive efficiencies, rather than exploring more advanced AI uses to transform their businesses. The contrast is stark: while just 3% of large businesses have fully integrated AI, 18% of startups have brought AI into the heart of their business. While the vibrant startup community is a cause for celebration, risks remain: although large businesses represent less than a percent of the EU market (.2%), they employ over a third of the European workforce (35%) and generate half of European turnover (50%).[3] Full integration of AI across the market will bolster productivity and economic gains to new levels. Recent research estimates that cloud adoption in Europe stands to add nearly $2.6 trillion to Europe by 2030, and cloud-enabled AI could alone add nearly $434 billion.[4]

Beyond tech: AI's widening reach

The AI revolution isn't confined to tech hubs. Our research reveals AI spreading into unexpected corners of European economies:

An app for farmers in Italy using AI to predict insect population and crop health months in advance

A non-governmental organisation in the UK using drone imagery and AI to identify unexploded landmines

A software company in Lyon using generative AI to bring pharmaceutical treatments to market faster

These examples showcase how AI is transforming businesses far beyond Silicon Valley stereotypes - making waves across the tech and non-tech industries alike.

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    Yseop is revolutionising regulatory medical writing with generative AI, significantly reducing the time it takes to bring life-saving treatments to market. Leveraging Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic’s Large Language Model Claude 3.5, Yseop automates the generation of complex regulatory documents, transforming months of manual work into a streamlined, efficient process.


    By maintaining a critical "human-in-the-loop" approach, Yseop ensures regulatory accuracy, expert oversight, and compliance with global standards. Its AI-driven solutions have saved pharmaceutical companies thousands of hours in document preparation time—accelerating drug approvals, improving patient access, and enabling faster medical breakthroughs.

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    Yseop features in AWS Pioneers Project: a spotlight on the pioneers behind Europe’s groundbreaking innovations shaping the future of AI.

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    In the UK, the local government in Swindon, a town of 180,000 people two hours west of London, is working to make AI tools that it has used to improve residents’ access to public services open-source and available for other local governments to use, license-free.[5] This includes releasing the prompts and parameters they have curated so that others in the public sector and civil society can customize them rather than starting from scratch. Government departments that lead networks of local services and authorities could boost diffusion by pursuing similar initiatives to promote knowledge transfer and help scale up local innovations to the national level:

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    The Swindon case study shows how local governments can use cloud-based AI tools to make content more accessible for residents who have special needs, such as low literacy levels (1 in 5 UK citizens do not have high school level literacy), cognitive impairment, or learning difficulties (affecting 15% of the global population). It typically costs public-service providers around $250 to transform a single page of content into an easy read format that is more easily accessible to these populations. Using software tooling available through Amazon Bedrock, Swindon Council has reduced that cost to around $0.10 per page. As the head of Swindon Council’s digital initiatives notes, “cloud-based technology has enabled this service innovation. The cloud is a place where we can experiment and explore fast, securely, and at low cost. And our teams don’t need to know Python or have a PhD in AI. We can simply focus on realising our ideas for new service improvements.”

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78% believe it will transform education, making personalised learning accessible to all

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81% see it revolutionising healthcare, from early disease detection to personalised treatment plans

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64% anticipate its transformative impact on agriculture, helping to feed a growing population sustainably

The public's perspective

This is particularly the case in healthcare, where 60% of citizens call for increased AI adoption in the public sector, outpacing other high-priority areas including education (38%), social security (23%) and public transportation (23%). 


This strong demand underscores the public's recognition of AI's transformative potential in revolutionising healthcare delivery, improving patient outcomes, and addressing critical challenges in the sector which is facing increasing obstacles to rolling out technology, making it a clear focus for investment and innovation.


Across the continent, there are significant opportunities to enhance the relationship between public administration and citizens and deliver on public desire for digitalisations. EU initiatives, such as the Commission’s European action plan to strengthen hospital and healthcare cybersecurity and the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) will address the strong interest in healthcare digitalisation, while the upcoming reform of public procurement rules,[6]  will continue to boost the productivity and quality of public services and meet citizens’ expectations.

Perhaps most striking is the growing public enthusiasm for AI.


Citizens across Europe increasingly consider AI not as a distant technology, but as a solution to pressing challenges:

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