Number of companies using AI rises to 25%, with €142 million invested

The number of Catalan companies with ten or more employees using Artificial Intelligence has skyrocketed in the last year, rising from 15.3% to 25.6% by the first quarter of 2025.

These are data from the survey on the use of e-commerce and information and communication technology (ICT), published this Wednesday by Spain's National Institute of Statistics, which estimates the those companies have spent €142 million on this technology in the last year.

In addition, the same source points out that 14.8% of micro-companies, firms with fewer than 10 employees, use AI.

In 2021, the first year in which the survey asked about the use of AI, 8.9% of companies said they used it, a percentage that gradually grew to 15.3% last year, and that has now skyrocketed in the last year, reaching more than 1-in-4 firms. 

By sector, services lead the way in its use, with over 30%, while industry remains at 21% and construction at 10%.

A third of companies that use AI tools do so to convert spoken language into a machine-readable format, to automate workflows, or help with decision-making, to analyze data with machine learning, or to organize business administration or management processes.

In addition to the 25% of companies that have implemented AI, a further 13.9% have considered it at some point. More than half of those who have considered it have not yet done so due to a lack of clarity regarding the legal consequences. 

Remote working

Almost half (46.5%) of companies with at least ten employees say they allow remote working, which represents a drop of nine percentage points compared to 2022.

Three years ago, the number of companies that allowed it stood at 55.3%, and after a sharp drop the following year, the figure has stabilized at 46.5% this year.

Yet, only 22% of employees work from home regularly.

The average number of days they work from home is 2.3 days per week.