SME market briefing, autumn 2026
AI went from a curiosity to a line item in most budgets. Big companies moved first, investors piled in, and a handful of startups broke every growth record. Most smaller businesses have not acted yet. That is exactly where the opportunity sits.
How the market moved
The tools arrive for everyone. About 8% of EU companies use any form of AI, and enterprise spending on generative AI is still small.
Experiments become budgets. Spending on generative AI grows to $11.5 billion and EU adoption jumps to 13.5%.
AI becomes the economy's main investment theme. Roughly half of all venture capital goes to AI and company spending triples again to $37 billion.
New companies reach in months what used to take a decade. Two of the clearest examples are from Stockholm.
The size gap
In Sweden, one of Europe's leaders, fewer than a third of small companies use AI while almost three in four large ones do. Across the EU the gap is even wider.
This is not because large firms are smarter. They started with spare people, budgets and IT teams. When asked why they held back, Swedish companies gave one answer far above the rest: they lacked the know-how.
Sources: Statistics Sweden (SCB), Eurostat
of Swedish companies neither used nor even considered AI in 2025. Your competitors are likely in this group too.
of the companies that considered AI and said no gave lack of expertise as the reason. Not cost, not doubt. Know-how.
Where the money is going
Companies spent $37 billion on generative AI in 2025, and more than half went to ready-made applications rather than to building their own. By one count, at least 50 AI products now earn over $100 million a year.
Chat assistants and copilots used across a whole company for writing, searching and summarising.
Coding alone is $4 billion of this, up from about $550 million a year earlier. Sales, customer support and HR follow.
Nearly three times the year before. Healthcare leads, legal is around $650 million, and every trade has room for its own specialist.
US enterprise spend, 2025. Source: Menlo Ventures
Venture capital into AI in 2025, up 85% in a year
Share of all global venture capital that went to AI, up from 34%
Of AI funding that went to a few companies building the core models
Of AI funding that went to US-based companies
Source: Crunchbase
The billions build the engines. The everyday opportunity is in putting those engines to work on a specific problem, for a specific kind of customer.
Funded or making money?
Fast growth is not the same as profit. Some of the fastest-growing AI tools pay so much for computing power that their margins are thin or negative, and a widely cited MIT study claimed most company AI pilots deliver no measurable return. The data does not say every AI venture pays off. It says the ones that solve a clear problem for a clear customer get paid faster than at any time before.
Sources: Crunchbase, Carta, Stripe via TechCrunch, The Information via Techleap, Menlo Ventures
The record-breakers
Lets anyone build an app by describing it. The fastest software company ever to that revenue mark, reported at $400 million a year by March 2026.
AI workspace for lawyers. Now serves over 1,000 law firms and legal teams and is valued at $5.5 billion.
AI code editor for developers. Reported to have passed $2 billion in annualised revenue in early 2026.
AI image generation. Built on subscriptions alone and profitable early, the clearest proof that you do not need venture money.
Notice where two of these four come from. You do not need to be in Silicon Valley. Both Stockholm companies took a single, well-understood problem and made it dramatically easier.
Sources: Tech.eu, The Next Web, news reports on Lovable and Cursor revenue, Techleap
Creativity enablement
For a small business, the scarce resource is rarely ideas. It is people to bounce them off, time to develop them, and skills outside your own field. That is exactly where the research shows AI helping most.
776 professionals worked on real product development challenges. People working alone with AI produced ideas as good as two-person teams without it, and AI-supported teams were about three times as likely to land an idea in the top ten percent. Technical and commercial staff also crossed over: with AI, both produced more balanced ideas outside their own speciality.
Sources: Harvard Business School / NBER, Mi3 summary
758 BCG consultants developed new product ideas and marketing material. Those using AI delivered work rated about 40% higher in quality and finished 25% faster.
Source: Harvard Business School and BCG
In the same study, people who started below average improved by 43%, compared with 17% for top performers. You do not need to be a creative professional to benefit.
Source: Harvard Business School and BCG
In a study in Science Advances, 600 independent readers judged stories written with AI-suggested ideas as more creative and more enjoyable, especially from writers who were less creative to begin with.
The P&G researchers found AI mainly lifts the quality of the ideas generated, while human judgment stays valuable when picking which ones to pursue. Your knowledge of your customers is what turns a good idea into the right one. Read the study
The same story study found AI-assisted work looked more alike. And on tasks outside AI's strengths, consultants using it got the right answer less often. If everyone asks the same tool the same question, they get the same answer. Your own voice and perspective become the competitive edge.
Women in the numbers
Companies with at least one woman founder raised more than ever in 2025, and AI drove most of it. Anthropic, co-founded by Daniela Amodei, and Scale AI, co-founded by Lucy Guo, accounted for over $30 billion on their own.
Strip those out and the picture is quieter: teams made up only of women still receive around 2% of US venture capital, and the number of deals has fallen four years in a row. At the same time, women-founded companies have historically produced more than twice the revenue per invested dollar, with lower burn rates. That combination of capital efficiency and an underfunded field is an opportunity in its own right.
Share of US venture capital raised by companies with a woman founder in 2025, up from 19.9%
Of that money went to AI companies
Raised by women-founded startups in Europe in 2025, a three-year high
Women-founded unicorns in Europe, the most ever recorded
Of European women founders now use AI in their business, up from 77%
Of US venture capital goes to all-women founding teams
Sources: PitchBook via Business Wire, Fortune, WLRN, Female Innovation Index 2026
Looking ahead
Nobody can predict this market precisely, so treat these as forecasts, not facts. But analysts and regulators broadly agree on the direction: AI moves from helping people with tasks to carrying out tasks on its own, inside rules that are now taking shape.
Gartner expected traditional search volume to fall by a quarter as people ask AI assistants instead. Being the answer an assistant recommends becomes a new marketing skill. EU rules on labelling AI-generated content also take effect in December.
Sources: Gartner via MediaPost, Gibson Dunn
Gartner forecasts that over 40% of AI agent projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 for unclear value or high cost. EU rules for high-risk uses, such as recruitment and credit scoring, apply from December. Clear, practical use cases win.
Sources: Gartner via SD Times, Gibson Dunn
A third of business software is expected to include AI agents, up from under 1% in 2024. Around 15% of day-to-day work decisions could be made by them, up from practically none.
Source: Gartner via SD Times
Gartner predicts AI agents will resolve 80% of common customer service issues without a person involved. Customer expectations of speed and availability will reset accordingly, also for small suppliers.
The next shift is not about having AI, it is about letting it do work on your behalf, in your customer service, your bookings, your follow-ups. The businesses that have practised with today's tools will be ready to hand over more as the tools mature.
Forecasts like these are often early on timing and right on direction. You do not need to chase every new tool. You need a clear picture of which of your processes would benefit first, and a habit of testing small.
What this means for you
Put AI to work inside the business you already run: quoting, marketing, customer replies, admin. Marketing and sales is the most common starting point among Swedish companies, and the gains go straight to your margin.
Turn what you know about your trade into an AI-supported service. Industry knowledge is the scarce ingredient. The technology is available to everyone; understanding a customer's daily problem is not.
Create a product for a specific group of customers. More people now start alone, and AI-first companies reach paying customers faster than any software generation before them.
There is no reason to panic. But the window has a shape: it is widest while most of your competitors are still deciding. Each year the gap between those who started and those who did not becomes harder to close.
Our opportunity questionnaire walks you through your market, your business and yourself as the person leading it. No score, no sales pitch. Just a clear view of where to look first. Then let us talk it through with you.
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