In the third quarter of 2026, 1 in 4 (25.2%) businesses in Canada reported they plan to use AI to produce goods or deliver services over the next 12 months, up from 14.5% in the third quarter of 2025 and 10.6% in the third quarter of 2024, according to a report by Statistics Canada.
"Over the course of the last three years, the industries with the highest proportion of businesses planning to use AI has remained consistent. Professional, scientific and technical services; information and cultural industries; and finance and insurance have been among the leaders in planned AI use in each of the last three years," said the federal agency.
"It is worth noting that some industries have seen significant increases in their planned AI use since the third quarter of 2024. For example, the proportion of businesses in construction that planned to use AI has grown from 3.2% to 18.3% between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2026. During this same timeframe, the proportion of businesses in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction that planned to use AI over the next 12 months rose from 4.6% to 14.8%.
"Among the 1 in 4 (25.2%) businesses in the third quarter of 2026 that reported plans to use AI over the next 12 months, the most commonly cited AI applications were data analytics (41.7%), large language models (39.3%), and virtual agents or chat bots (31.8%). Between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2026, the planned use of large language models saw the most growth, more than quadrupling from 9.3% to 39.3%. This was followed by the planned use of data analytics, where the proportion grew from 26.7% to 41.7%."
Businesses in professional, scientific and technical services; and information and cultural industries had the highest proportion of businesses planning to use AI over the next 12 months (54.8% and 48.0% respectively) in the third quarter of 2026. Among businesses in professional, scientific and technical services, large language models (54.9%) and data analytics (40.5%) were the AI applications most frequently cited. For businesses in information and cultural industries, large language models (61.6%) and virtual agents or chat bots (51.5%) were the most commonly cited AI applications, it said.
"While businesses of all sizes have observed growth in plans to use AI over the last three years, those plans have notably accelerated between the third quarter of 2025 and the third quarter of 2026. This increase was more significant for larger businesses. The proportion of businesses with 20 to 99 employees that planned to use AI more than doubled from 15.0% to 32.8% while the proportion of businesses with 100 or more employees that planned to use AI rose from 20.5% to 37.5%," added StatsCan.