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OECD D4SME Survey 2025

39% of SMEs use AI · 49% of medium SMEs blocked by training time.

§ 01 — Methodology

How the report was conducted.

2025 Digital for SMEs (D4SME) Survey covers 2,000+ SMEs across 10 OECD countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, UK, US). Annual cadence.

§ 02 — Verbatim quote (no paraphrase)

"AI adoption has increased significantly, with 39% of SMEs using AI applications, up from 26% in 2024. Among the possible AI applications, generative AI is the most widely used, with 26% of businesses using it. Key barriers include lack of awareness (46%) and perceived irrelevance (39%)."

— OECD, D4SME Survey 2025

§ 03 — What the report actually says

Breakdown by what we cite

Datapoint	Reading
AI adoption (all SMEs)	39% (up from 26% in 2024)
Generative AI specifically	26% of businesses
Top barrier: lack of awareness	46% of non-adopters
Top barrier: perceived irrelevance	39% of non-adopters
Top barrier: lack of training time (medium SMEs)	49%
Hardware costs barrier	32%

§ 04 — Additional findings

Context we don't cite directly but relied on.

• Realised benefit #1 among AI adopters: process automation (53%).
• Realised benefit #2: customer base expansion (39%).
• Maintenance costs and lack of training time consistently top barriers.
• Singapore not in the 10-country survey, but adjacent economies (Korea, Japan, Australia) suggest SG is in the same adoption-curve band.

§ 05 — Why this matters for your business

The application.

The single biggest barrier to AI adoption is not cost or technology — it's time. 49% of medium SMEs say they don't have time to train. Our playbook removes the training step entirely: you receive 12 ready workflows + 2 turn-key configs in 7 days, not a course you have to find time to take.

§ 06 — Read the original

Two ways to verify.

We don't paraphrase. The original report is publicly available — download our archived copy below, or visit the publisher directly.

We archive every cited PDF locally so the link never breaks. You can download our copy above, or grab the latest version directly from the publisher's site.

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