The growth in numbers
The spread of artificial intelligence through Italy's productive fabric marks a clear acceleration. According to the study by the Institute for Competitiveness (I-Com) reported by Agenda Digitale, in 2025 the share of companies with at least 10 employees using one or more artificial intelligence technologies doubled compared with the previous year, rising from 8.2% to 16.4%. The figure compares with the 5% recorded in 2023, the year the analysis sets as its starting point.
The progression is therefore not an isolated episode but part of a growth curve that in two years has more than tripled the pool of companies involved. The figure covers companies with a minimum size of ten employees, a threshold that excludes the large pool of microenterprises and confines the study's scope to an already structured production segment.
Gaps that remain open
Behind the overall doubling, the source points to significant gaps between companies and between territories. According to the study, company size and available skills are what shape the spread of AI technologies. The territorial picture emerges as a further factor of heterogeneity, with access to artificial intelligence opportunities not being uniform across the national production system.
The key point, emphasized by the source, is that growth in adoption does not automatically translate into full use of technical possibilities. The Agenda Digitale article explicitly headlines the issue: more companies use AI, but few exploit its possibilities. The gap, then, is not only between those who adopt and those who do not, but also between those who adopt and those who manage to make the most of the tools introduced.
The conditions indicated by the study
According to I-Com, the economic benefits linked to AI are uneven among companies. The source identifies digital maturity and process review as the conditions for widespread growth: technological adoption alone is not enough, that is, if it is not accompanied by an adequate level of digital preparedness and a rethinking of working methods.
These are indications that concern the organizational and skills side more than the strictly technological one. In the available material, the study does not quantify the size of the economic benefits or their distribution among companies, and it does not specify which AI technologies were considered in the survey. It therefore remains to be verified, at the data level, how much territorial and size-related gaps weigh differently across the various areas of the country and which sectors show the greatest delays.
The picture that emerges from the material is one of rapidly growing but uneven adoption, in which the challenge hinges on companies' ability to turn access to tools into an effective advantage. On this front, the source identifies the enabling conditions but does not provide elements to measure how close Italian companies are today to meeting them.
