September 2025 Survey Results State of AI Adoption for SMBs

TSL Tech Research surveyed 84 (and counting) IT professionals mostly from firms with 1000 to 5000 employees to find out the current state of the AI adoption journey. 

We found that most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are still in the early stages of AI. While these firms are exploring and testing AI, few have deployed large-scale AI applications. 

Many challenges stand in the way of AI maturity, including security, skills gaps, and data integration concerns. 

Agentic AI Adoption 

AI agents use artificial intelligence to perform routine tasks automatically. When we asked IT leaders at SMBs where their organization was in the adoption of AI agents, most responded that they were in the exploratory stage. 

Of the SMBs surveyed: 

• 58% Are exploring an initial use case 

• 21% Are actively piloting AI agents in one or more areas 

• 14% Are not currently considering AI agents 

• 14% Have implemented AI agents 

• 10% Are planning a pilot within the next 12 months 

While it is encouraging that over 50% of companies are starting their AI adoption journey, organizations need help in piloting and implementing AI agents. IT providers can offer guidance in uncovering opportunities for using AI agents to automate workflows, as well as implementing the necessary applications. 

Building and Deploying AI Applications 

When asked how to best describe your organization's current stage in building or deploying AI applications, more than a third of companies stated that they were still in the experimental stage. 

Of the SMBs surveyed: 

• 37% Are experimenting or piloting AI tools for application development 

• 19% Are evaluating platforms and tools to begin building AI applications 

• 17% Currently have no plans to develop AI applications 

• 11% Actively develop and deploy AI applications using internal tools and platforms 

• 11% Have AI-related goals but no formal plans or tools in place yet 

These findings uncover opportunities for IT firms to step in to offer solutions and services that would help SMBs develop and deploy AI applications. 

AI Adoption Challenges 

TSL Tech Research wanted to understand why SMBs might be lagging in their adoption of AI, so we asked respondents to identify their challenges in developing and implementing AI applications. We found that the top concern was security and privacy with skills gaps ranking close second. 

The top five challenges to developing and deploying AI applications were: 

• 44% Concerns around data security and privacy 

• 43% Lack of skilled personnel or AI expertise 

• 26% Difficulty integrating AI with existing systems 

• 25% Poor data quality or lack of labeled data 

• 21% High costs of tools, infrastructure, or compute 

These insights are useful for IT firms that want to market AI solutions and services. Technology providers can target companies that have pain points around AI security, governance, and expertise, as well as those that need help integrating AI systems. 

Become Part of the Future of AI 

TSL Tech Research aims to conduct original research into technology trends and challenges faced by today’s companies so we can help IT solutions and service providers understand their target audience’s needs.  

Using the insights provided by our research, IT firms can offer AI solutions and services to accelerate adoption. According to TSL Research, SMBs need AI infrastructure solutions for supporting AI development and implementation. Services for AI security, systems integration, and data governance would help organizations accelerate the AI journey by removing barriers to adoption.

Want to gain more insights into technology trends and challenges? Reach out to TSL Tech Research to run a survey or ask us to design a custom survey for your IT business.