Spending on AI Tools by UK SMBs Grows Fivefold in Past Two Years, According to Spendesk Data
By Lauren Hinton · 13 December 2024
Spendesk, the complete spend management platform, has shared the findings of a new study of corporate spending on AI tools among 4,300 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the UK and across Europe. As the AI industry grows in maturity, the findings reflect how businesses are both mass-adopting while strategically investing in scalable, creative, and safety-focused AI tools to balance cost, functionality, and societal impact.
Key Findings:
- The number of UK SMBs adopting AI tools in 2024 is 32 times more than in 2022
- Per-company spending on AI tools in the UK rose 5.9 times from €195 in 2022 to €1,151 in 2024
- OpenAI is the most popular AI vendor among UK companies, with a total billing amount of €656,355 in 2024, up from €183,052 in 2023, and an average monthly bill of €160 per company
- Conversational AI tools such as ChatGPT have seen increases in overall spend in the UK but maintained low average billing rates, indicating that these tools are successfully scaling across industries
- There is evidence UK businesses are thinking more about responsible AI usage and safety, with spending on Anthropic rising from €323 in 2023 to €14,574 in 2024
The Spendesk corporate spend data shows that UK businesses are placing increased trust in AI tools. The adoption rate for AI solutions has grown more than 32 times in two years, from 19 UK companies of those surveyed in 2022 to 599 in 2024.
Results also show a consistent rise in average spending on AI among UK businesses, from €195 per company in 2022 to €1,151 per company in 2024. This suggests that many businesses in the UK are moving beyond basic AI adoption, and are now integrating it into core workflows.
Compared to their French and German counterparts in the study, spend on AI among UK companies has grown more quickly over the past two years. However, the number of French SMBs adopting AI tools has increased by a greater amount – 57 times – during the same period, while German companies spend more on average than UK companies at €1,332 per month.
The fast growth of OpenAI's business in the UK – with billing levels reaching €656,355 in 2024, up from €183,052 in 2023 – implies that UK companies are prioritizing large-scale, adaptable AI platforms for diverse applications such as content generation, customer interaction, data analysis, and automation.
Where creative AI applications are concerned, UK business' spending on Midjourney grew from €7,763 in 2023 to €12,612 in 2024, with average billing amounts decreasing from €45 per month in 2023 to €37 per month in 2024. This indicates that businesses in media, marketing, and design are taking advantage of the lower barrier to entry for access to creative AI tools.
Conversational AI tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly being used by UK companies to directly interact with customers, enabling real-time engagement and streamlined customer services. Spend on ChatGPT among UK companies grew in 2024, with average billing rates only showing a modest increase (from €21 per month to €36 per month), indicating that conversational AI is fast becoming standard across industries for customer support thanks to its relatively low costs.
Meanwhile, the report's findings also show that many UK businesses are thinking more about responsible AI usage and safety, with spending on Anthropic – an AI safety and research company – rising from €323 in 2023 to €14,574 in 2024.
"AI has been around for a long time, and companies have been testing and launching proofs of concepts (POCs) for the past 10 years. Their number one challenge, however, has been to scale up these initiatives,” commented Axel Demazy, CEO of Spendesk.
“What I see in this data is that GenAI has accelerated employee access to AI; and when you look at how steep that acceleration is, you can tell the inflection point is far from being reached. We have only scratched the surface of how AI can augment human operations at scale in all our workflows, and we will see continued investment by businesses as a result." Companies in this story: Spendesk
People in this story: Axel Demazy