OpenAI says AI agents are now doing most of the work for its European business customers. In its EU sample of ChatGPT Enterprise accounts, Codex and ChatGPT Work account for more than half of output tokens, the chunks of text a model generates. The editor's framing of an EU "crackdown" does not appear in this report, which is OpenAI's own usage analysis, not a regulatory document.
Small businesses are catching up fast
OpenAI defines a small or medium business as one with 200 or fewer associated users. Since May 2026, weekly active users of Codex and ChatGPT Work among those EU firms grew more than eightfold, with growth in every member state. Those two tools are built to carry a task from planning through to completion, rather than just answer a question.
Treat this as a company's view of its own customers. OpenAI did not publish absolute user counts in the text we read, so an eightfold rise could start from a small base. That text also does not explain how OpenAI chose its EU sample, what share of its European customers the sample covers, or whether some industries are overrepresented. We have not seen comment from rival AI vendors or independent researchers on whether they see the same pattern, so this is one company's account.
A wide gap between countries
The spread is large. Among Enterprise accounts in the sample, the share of output tokens from Codex and ChatGPT Work ranged from 22% in Slovenia to 85% in Lithuania.
Europe's leaders still trail the world's
The sharper finding is about intensity. OpenAI defines frontier firms as the top 10% by output tokens per active user. In September, EU frontier firms generated more than four times as many tokens per active user as typical EU firms. Frontier firms outside the EU still generated more than twice as many as their EU peers.
EU-based companies make up only 10% of frontier firms worldwide, which OpenAI calls low given the EU's larger share of registered companies. Note that the sample covers only ChatGPT Enterprise and Business accounts, so it says nothing about companies using rival tools.
OpenAI's prescription: move firms past experimentation, build worker skills and confidence, and make advanced capabilities cheaper and easier to get. That is also a case for its own products.
What to watch: whether OpenAI releases the underlying data, and how EU rules treat autonomous agents. Does heavy agent use make your workplace more productive, or just busier?
Sources
- 1.The EU’s next chapter in AI is agentic · OpenAI
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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