OpenAI’s analysis of usage across more than one million business customers documents a stark divide between workers who have integrated Artificial Intelligence into daily workflows and those who have not. Employees at the 95th percentile of adoption send six times as many messages to ChatGPT as the median user, while frontier workers send 17 times as many coding-related messages and, among data analysts, the heaviest users engage the data analysis tool 16 times more frequently. ChatGPT Enterprise is now deployed across more than 7 million workplace seats globally, a nine-fold increase from a year ago, yet access alone does not explain the differences in uptake and impact.
Usage patterns show that many employees never try core capabilities: among monthly active users, 19 percent have never tried the data analysis feature, 14 percent have never used reasoning capabilities, and 12 percent have never used search. By contrast, daily users are far more experimental: only 3 percent of people who use ChatGPT every day have never tried data analysis, and just 1 percent have skipped reasoning or search. Workers who engage across approximately seven distinct task types report saving five times as much time as those who use only four, and employees who save more than 10 hours per week consume eight times more AI credits than those who report no time savings. Seventy-five percent of surveyed workers say they can now complete tasks they previously could not perform.
The divide exists at the firm level as well as among individuals. Frontier firms generate approximately twice as many AI messages per employee as the median enterprise, and messages routed through custom GPTs widen the gap to seven-fold. Roughly one in four enterprises still has not enabled connectors that give AI access to company data. A separate MIT Project NANDA study frames a corporate paradox: despite $30 billion to $40 billion invested in generative Artificial Intelligence initiatives, 95 percent of organizations are seeing no transformative return. The reports point to organizational factors-executive sponsorship, data readiness, workflow standardization, and change management-rather than the underlying models as the barrier to broader transformation, with enterprise contract dynamics over the next 18 months making the window to close the gap urgent.
