Europe Accelerates in AI Race But a Growing Divide Threatens Progress

European companies improved AI readiness faster over the past six months, although North American firms remain ahead overall

MILAN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Europe’s largest companies are showing early signs of narrowing the AI readiness gap with North America, but a growing divide between large and smaller firms risks holding the region back, according to the inaugural Accenture AI Progress Barometer.

AI readiness refers to the essential capabilities that organizations need to maximize the value they derive from AI such as having quality data that is easily accessible, a skilled workforce, and appropriate processes in place.

Accenture’s (NYSE:ACN) AI Progress Barometer tracks how the AI readiness of approximately 3,000 of the world’s largest companies evolves over time, benchmarking each company against peers across industries and regions. Companies are scored on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the highest level of AI readiness among the companies assessed.

According to the Barometer, European companies improved their AI Readiness scores by 1.6 points over the past six months, compared with a 1.1-point improvement in North America. These early signs of improvement for Europe still need to be confirmed in the next edition of the Barometer. However, North American companies continue to maintain a higher overall level of AI readiness on average, with scores of 48.9 out of 100 compared with 43.1 for European companies.

The data also highlights a widening divide within Europe itself. The largest European companies (those with annual revenues above $10 billion) now rank just 2.1 points behind their North American peers (47.4 versus 49.5). Smaller European companies, however, lag comparable North American firms by 7.6 points (40.5 versus 48.1), highlighting a pronounced “long tail” that could weigh on Europe’s future competitiveness.

This gap is significantly wider in Europe than in North America, underlining the risk that smaller companies could miss out on the next wave of AI-led productivity and growth unless they accelerate investment in the capabilities needed to scale AI.

Mauro Macchi, CEO for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Accenture, said, “Europe is clearly building real momentum in AI, mainly driven by its largest companies. They understand that for AI to deliver more value, faster, it requires enterprise-wide reinvention, not just plug-and-play adoption. This means rethinking operating models, redesigning how work gets done, strengthening their data and technology foundations, and most importantly ensuring leadership engagement and proper governance and change management. The speed of execution will define Europe’s future competitiveness.”

The pace of progress varies considerably across countries and sectors. Companies in France (+5 to 43.1), the United Kingdom (+4.8 to 44.5), and Spain (+4.6 to 39.9) recorded the largest improvements in AI readiness.

Ten of the 18 sectors tracked by the Barometer showed overall improvement in AI readiness, with companies in insurance (+8 to 48.6), travel (+5.7 to 46.7) and consumer goods (+5.2 to 43.7) recording the fastest gains compared to their peers globally. Insurance led the sector rankings, reflecting significant work done in transforming processes and modernizing their data foundation.

Gavin Stephenson, Accenture’s Data & AI lead for EMEA, said: “This progress reflects a shift from experimentation to execution at scale. A growing number of European companies are beginning to reinvent business processes with AI, while cleaning their data and skilling their people. For instance, insurers are not just deploying AI on top of existing processes but are redesigning how work gets done—straightforward claims can be automated from damage assessment to payment, while complex cases get flagged for a human expert. This redesign is only possible with clean, integrated and accessible data underneath, and with a workforce that is properly trained.”

About the AI Progress Barometer

Accenture’s AI Progress Barometer tracks the progress organizations are making in building the capabilities required to scale AI and extract maximum value from it. Data is collected every six months to measure progress. The Barometer is a measure of change, with scores showing the progress organizations have made. It covers the largest ~3,000 companies in the world.

Scores are aggregated and averaged by region and industry to enable comparison. The inaugural edition uses H2 2025 as the baseline reference point to show how companies’ relative AI readiness positions evolved through H1 2026. Changes in score indicate how companies have moved up or down the AI readiness rankings since H2 2025.

Scores are updated every six months and reflect relative movement against global peers across four pillars:

• Strategic direction: strategic focus on AI, responsible AI and AI investment plans
• Technology foundation: 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.

About Accenture

Accenture helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. We bring together the talent of our approximately 799,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $70 billion in FY25 revenue. Visit us at accenture.com.