How many Dutch companies really use AI?

Why do the figures differ so much?

For three reasons, and they stack on top of each other.

1. What counts as using AI. CBS asks about eight specific technologies and counts a company as soon as it uses one of them. Other studies ask "do you use AI" and leave the interpretation to the respondent. Someone who opens ChatGPT now and then is counted too.
2. From which company size. CBS publishes two series: from two employees and from ten. That is a difference of fifteen percentage points. Sole traders and the smallest companies pull the average down considerably.
3. How the participants were recruited. CBS draws a statistical sample with a duty to respond. Panels run by software vendors and banks consist of customers and subscribers who decide for themselves to take part. That is not a criticism of those studies, but it does make the results incomparable with a statistic.

Which figures circulate, and what do they measure?

Source	Figure	Reference year	What was measured
CBS	18 %	2025	companies with 2 or more employees, eight defined technologies
CBS	33 %	2025	companies with 10 or more employees, eight defined technologies
Eurostat, Netherlands	33.2 %	2025	same measurement, harmonized across Europe; EU average 20.0 %
KVK Omnibus	three in ten	2025	651 business owners, self-reported; in business services 46 %
ING, manufacturing	29 %	2025	Dutch manufacturing companies, against a 17 % EU average

The first three rows measure the same thing and therefore do not contradict each other: 18 and 33 percent are two cuts through the same measurement. That is rarely presented that way, and that is where the confusion starts.

What exactly does CBS measure?

Eight technologies, from reporting year 2025 onward. A company counts as a user as soon as it puts at least one of them to work.

• text mining
• speech recognition
• natural language generation, so the generating of text
• the generating of images, video or sound (new in 2025)
• image recognition
• machine learning
• robotic process automation
• service robots or autonomous vehicles

Note what is not in there: "an employee sometimes uses a chatbot" is not a category. Someone who uses ChatGPT to write texts falls under natural language generation and is therefore counted, but only if the company answers that question with yes.

Why can you not simply put the years side by side?

This is the most important footnote on the whole subject, and it is mentioned almost nowhere. The questionnaire has been widened over the years. Up to and including 2024 there were seven technologies, from 2025 eight. So the jump from 22.7 to 33 percent is partly real growth and partly a broader question.

That is why CBS also publishes a series on the four technologies that stayed the same in all years. That one shows a very different picture.

Reference year	Seven technologies	The four comparable ones
2021	13.1 %	10.7 %
2022	15.8 %	13.3 %
2023	14.0 %	10.6 %
2024	22.7 %	12.9 %

On the four comparable technologies, use grew from 10.7 to 12.9 percent between 2021 and 2024. That is a very different story from a doubling. The real acceleration sits in the new categories, and that is exactly what you would expect: generating text and images is what has been added to the toolbox since 2023.

How big is the difference between large and small?

Big. This is the figure it comes down to for a director of a midsize company.

Company size	Uses AI (2025)
2 employees	13 %
5 to 10	20 %
10 to 20	25 %
20 to 50	33 %
50 to 100	43 %
100 to 250	52 %
250 to 500	61 %
500 or more	73 %

From twenty to fifty people a third is in, from a hundred people half. The strongest growth was at companies of fifty to two hundred fifty people: from 20 percent in 2023 to 45 percent in 2025. That is the group where it is happening now.

And per sector?

Reference year 2025, companies with two or more employees.

Sector	Uses AI
Information and communication	56 %
Specialized business services	34 %
Financial services	29 %
Renting and trade of real estate	22 %
Energy, water and waste management	19 %
Manufacturing	18 %
Health and social care	17 %
Trade	14 %
Construction	8 %
Transportation and storage	7 %
Hospitality	7 %

Construction, transportation and hospitality sit below ten percent. Those are not coincidentally the sectors where the work happens outside and the information comes in with a delay. What is possible in such a company is set out in AI in the installation sector.

Which figures did not hold up?

We looked up every figure circulating in Dutch articles at the original source. Two often quoted series we could not confirm. That is not an accusation, it is what we could and could not find.

• The series 6 percent (2024), 33 percent (2025), 70 percent (2026). Those three numbers do not come from the same question. In 2024 the question was about concrete plans to implement AI, where 6 percent was the top of four stages. In 2025 and 2026 the question was whether AI is being used inside the company. Those are two different things placed side by side. On top of that, the publisher states 34 percent on its own site for the same edition where the report names 70 percent.
• 78 percent of smaller companies use AI to some degree, and 9 percent have formal policy against 32 percent of large companies. We could not trace these figures back to the party they are attributed to, not even in the full list of publications. If you know the original publication, we would like to hear from you.

One more detail you run into once you start looking: the CBS news release of December 2025 names 17 percent where the underlying table gives 18 percent for the same year and the same group. The difference is rounding, but it explains why you see both numbers going around.

Which number should you use?

If you need one sentence: in 2025, 18 percent of Dutch companies with two or more employees used at least one of the eight AI technologies measured by CBS, rising to 33 percent from ten employees, against an EU average of 20 percent.

Always state from which company size you are measuring. A figure about AI use without that note says nothing, and that is exactly why the discussion is so messy.

What does this mean when you have to take a decision yourself?

Three things, and none of them is "everyone is doing it so we should too".

• At your size it is no longer a head start, but not a gap either. From twenty to fifty people a third is doing something, from fifty to two hundred fifty almost half. So you are neither early nor late.
• Using is not the same as getting something out of it. These figures count every company that puts one technology to work, even if that is one employee with a text generator. On the question of how many companies really have AI inside their operations, no reliable figure exists in the Netherlands.
• The difference is not in the availability of technology. That is the same for everyone and costs almost nothing. The difference is whether there is someone who ties a decision to it. Which decisions those are is set out in AI for leadership.

Frequently asked questions

Why does one study name 18 percent and another 70?

Because of the definition and the sample. CBS measures eight specific technologies in a mandatory statistical sample. Panel studies ask "do you use AI" to their own customers, who take part voluntarily. Both are valid within their own setup, but they do not measure the same thing and are therefore not comparable.

Is the Netherlands ahead of or behind in Europe?

Ahead. In 2025 the Netherlands sat at 33.2 percent against an EU average of 20.0 percent, measured at companies with ten or more employees. On intensive use of three or more technologies the picture is less favorable: there the Netherlands sits at about 11 percent, behind countries like Belgium and Denmark. Broad, then, but shallow.

Which sector is furthest behind?

Hospitality and transportation at 7 percent, and construction at 8 percent. Those are sectors where the work happens on site and the information comes in with a delay, and that is exactly where flagging has the most to gain.

Where do these figures come from?

From the CBS ICT survey and from StatLine, plus the European figures from Eurostat. The full accounting per figure is at the bottom of this page.