PERSPECTIVE
Europe's AI readiness divide
5-MINUTE READ
June 29, 2026
Europe’s AI momentum is building—but smaller companies are being left behind
European companies have steadily built AI readiness over the past six months, Accenture’s inaugural AI Progress Barometer reveals, with early signs that the gap to North American peers is narrowing. But a growing divide between large and smaller organizations risks holding Europe back.
Measured every six months, the AI Progress Barometer tracks how quickly the world’s 3,000 largest companies are building AI readiness—the essential capabilities that organizations need to extract maximum value from AI investments, including high-quality data, a skilled workforce, and a focus on growth over efficiency.
Europe's AI progress is welcome—but unevenly distributed
In the past six months, Europe improved its AI readiness score by 1.6 points, outpacing North America (+1.1) and APAC (+0.2). However, North America (48.9) maintains a strong lead over Europe (43.1) on AI readiness overall.
The Barometer highlights how AI readiness improves with company size. The largest European companies (those with annual revenues above $10 billion) rank just 2.1 points behind their North American peers (47.4 vs. 49.5). Smaller European companies, however, lag similar-sized North American organization by 7.6 points (40.5 vs. 48.1). This ‘long tail’ risks undermining Europe’s future competitiveness.
#1 – Europe vs North America
Europe improved its average AI readiness score by 1.6 points over the past six months, compared with a 1.1-point improvement in North America. However, North American companies (48.9) remain ahead on overall AI readiness (vs. 43.1 for European companies).
DATA
+ 1.6
Europe is rapidly building AI capabilities—but remains behind North America
#2 – Europe's AI progression divide
The AI readiness trajectories of large and small European companies are diverging. The largest European companies gained ground on North American peers over the past six months, halving their deficit from 4.2 points to 2.1 points.
However, companies in the next revenue tier down remain 7.6 points behind their North American peers. This capability shortfall limits smaller companies’ ability to drive transformative change with AI, creating a drag on competitiveness given their critical role in the European economy.
DATA
7.6
Europe’s smaller companies are falling behind
#3 – What's driving Europe's progress
European organizations have accelerated on three of the four pillars assessed, signaling a critical shift from experimentation to execution.
First, European companies are setting a clearer strategic direction for how AI will reshape the business (+5.3 points). Second, they are developing people to lead the change, backed by reinventing talent models (+1.4 points). And third, they are reinventing processes to maximize value, including through the adoption of agentic AI (+0.9 points).
DATA
3/4
Strategy, talent and process reinvention underpin European progress
#4 – Industry momentum
Ten of the 18 industries tracked by the Barometer accelerated on AI readiness over the past six months in Europe. Insurance showed the largest improvement (+8 to 48.6), followed by travel (+5.7 to 46.7) and consumer goods (+5.2 to 43.7).
DATA
10/18
Momentum is building across many industries
Deep dives
Europe’s smaller companies are struggling to keep pace with their larger counterparts. Lowering early-stage risks, proving relevance in daily operations and building practical skills capacity can all boost adoption.
The one pillar in which European companies slipped slightly was technology foundations (-1.2 points), underscoring the need to strengthen AI ready cloud foundations.
Many of Europe’s largest economies built AI readiness over the past six months. France led the way (+5 to 43.1), followed by the UK (+4.8 to 44.5) and Spain (+4.6 to 39.9).
What this means
From momentum to execution at scale.
The momentum revealed by Accenture’s inaugural AI Progress Barometer is promising—but Europe needs to accelerate, and to broaden adoption across the business ecosystem. This means rethinking operating models, redesigning how work gets done and strengthening data and technology foundations. Leadership engagement, proper governance and change management are all critical. The speed of execution will define Europe’s future competitiveness.
Methodology
Accenture’s AI Progress Barometer tracks the progress organizations are making in building the capabilities needed to scale and extract maximum value from AI every six months. Companies are benchmarked globally against industry peers across four key areas of AI capability, and scored on a 0–100 percentile scale, where 100 represents the highest level of AI readiness in the peer set:
- Strategic direction: strategic focus on AI, responsible AI and AI investment plans
- Technology foundations: cyber, cloud and data maturity, R+D partnerships
- People and skills: employee reskilling, leadership engagement, workforce adaptation and AI job postings
- Process reinvention: redesign of business processes with AI, and through the adoption of AI agents.
The Barometer combines data from two proprietary Accenture datasets: The AI Index, an outside-in assessment of company abilities to scale with AI, and the Pulse of Change, an inside-out CXO survey conducted three times a year.