Eighty-four percent of Georgian companies are now planning, testing, or actively using artificial intelligence, according to a survey by the Business Association of Georgia (BAG), reported by Sputnik Georgia on July 20, 2026.

The poll surveyed more than 600 member companies across trade, services, manufacturing, and construction between June 9 and June 25, 2026. It found 47% are planning or researching AI adoption, 24% are piloting it, and 13% have fully integrated AI into at least one business process. Only 16% said they have no plans to adopt it.

Where adoption is furthest along

Adoption varies by sector: trade (54%) and construction (50%) lead in the exploration phase, while services and construction (33% each) have the most companies actively piloting AI tools. Manufacturing showed the most resistance, with 28% of firms reporting no plans to adopt it.

How companies are using it

Marketing and content creation was the most common use case (20%), followed by financial and risk management and customer support (15% each). Half of respondents rely on off-the-shelf global AI platforms, while 26% use internally trained models and 24% use specialized software, according to the survey.

Companies that have adopted AI reported concrete gains: 79% said it saves time and speeds up processes, 11% cited fewer errors, and 5% pointed to better service quality. Most respondents said staffing levels have held steady, with routine tasks – rather than jobs – shrinking.

What’s holding adoption back

The biggest obstacle was a shortage of qualified specialists (30%), followed by weak Georgian-language support in AI tools and limited or poorly structured data (16% each). Despite the gaps, 65% of surveyed companies plan to increase AI investment over the next one to two years, while 18% said they won’t allocate any budget to it.

The findings arrive as Georgia pushes AI cooperation on multiple fronts – from a research partnership with China to fielding a national team for the IOAI 2026 olympiad – suggesting private-sector adoption is running ahead of, and complementing, those government-led initiatives.