Census changed its AI question, breaking adoption trend comparisons
Large U.S. companies went from answering “yes” around 12% of the time in September 2025 to around 40% in October 2026, but that is not a clean measure of adoption growth. Census changed the question from AI used in “producing goods or services” to AI used in “any of its business functions,” widening what counts. Anyone using the data to judge corporate AI uptake needs to treat the before-and-after figures as non-comparable.