What Happened
A study published on July 13, 2026 by Pax8, surveying more than 400 small business leaders in the United States, found that 9 in 10 SMBs (90%) are now somewhere on the AI adoption curve: 61% are actively using AI in their business, and 29% are still experimenting.
Other numbers from the study:
- 62% believe their business will not stay competitive within three years without AI
- 74% believe AI helps them compete with larger companies
- Nearly 1 in 3 SMBs already using AI get stuck in the experimentation phase, never moving to real day to day use
What It Means for Your Business
Using AI is no longer a competitive edge on its own, it is the new baseline. Most of your competitors are already experimenting with it, at minimum.
But the study also shows where most businesses fail. It is not a lack of tools, it is a lack of a plan. Nearly a third of businesses get stuck 'trying' AI without ever putting it to real use, often because nobody set up a clear process for moving forward.
How to Get Past the Testing Phase
If this sounds like your business (you have tried AI, but never got real use out of it), the steps that tend to work are:
- Pick a single business process to start with, do not try to change everything at once
- Define what 'success' looks like before you start (time saved, customers served, deals closed)
- Test on a slice of the process before rolling it out fully
- Review results after 30 days and decide whether to expand, adjust, or switch tools
Our Advice
These numbers confirm what we see every day in Portuguese SMBs. The difference between businesses that get real value from AI and the ones stuck 'still testing it' is rarely the budget. It is having a clear plan and someone to help execute it.
Line Consulting AI helps SMBs move from testing to real results with a simple process: we identify the right problem to start with, build a pilot that runs a few weeks, and measure the outcome before expanding to the rest of the business. If you have tried AI without seeing a return, the problem is probably not the tool, it is the plan.