UK SMEs ramp up AI spending as adoption surges

AI is rapidly becoming part of the everyday toolkit for UK SMEs, with businesses increasingly using the technology to support everything from software development and content creation to research, productivity and routine administration.

Our internal data shows just how quickly this shift has happened. The proportion of SME cardholders spending with AI providers has risen from 1.1% in Q1 2023 to 12.8% in Q2 2026, meaning more than one in eight businesses in the dataset were buying AI by mid-2026. Over the same period, AI's share of total SME card spend increased almost 30-fold.

To understand how this shift is changing SME spending behaviour, the team here at Capital on Tap analysed internal business credit card transaction data from UK SME cardholders between Q1 2023 and Q2 2026. The analysis focuses on spending with identified pure-play AI providers, tracking changes in adoption, spending habits, provider preferences and the types of AI tools businesses are investing in.

AI adoption among UK SMEs has surged

AI has moved rapidly from an emerging technology to an increasingly established business expense. The proportion of SME cardholders buying AI increased more than elevenfold between Q1 2023 and Q2 2026, while the share of card spend going towards AI increased almost thirtyfold.

More than one in eight SMEs now spend on AI Tools

The proportion of SME cardholders spending on AI tools has risen from 1.1% in Q1 2023 to 12.8% in Q2 2026. That's an increase of more than 1,000% in just over three years, showing how quickly AI has moved into the mainstream for small businesses.

The increase has been particularly pronounced over the past year, suggesting that adoption is accelerating rather than simply continuing at a steady pace.

AI's share of total card spend has also grown substantially, rising from 0.005% in Q1 2023 to 0.146% in Q2 2026. While AI remains a relatively small proportion of overall SME expenditure, the scale of the increase points to a real shift in how businesses are allocating technology budgets.

SMEs are spending more, and using more AI tools

The growth in AI adoption tells only part of the story. Businesses already buying AI are also increasing the amount they spend, while a growing proportion are paying for multiple providers.

The typical quarterly AI spend among businesses buying AI more than doubled from £33.07 in Q1 2023 to £75.60 in Q2 2026. At the same time, the proportion of AI-buying businesses using two or more providers increased from 11.6% to 28.2%.

The increase in spending is not simply a result of SMEs paying more for individual AI purchases. The typical amount spent per purchase rose only slightly, from £16.65 to £18.10, suggesting that businesses are making additional purchases as they incorporate AI into more areas of their operations.

By Q2 2026, more than one in four AI-buying SMEs in the dataset were using multiple providers. For small businesses, AI is therefore increasingly becoming a toolkit rather than a single software subscription, with different platforms being used for different tasks.

Anthropic overtakes OpenAI to capture more than half of SME AI spend

One of the biggest shifts in the data is taking place between the leading AI providers.

Anthropic, the company behind Claude, accounted for 54.1% of AI spending among SMEs in the dataset by Q2 2026, compared with 27.3% for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

The finding is particularly notable because OpenAI remains the more widely used provider. OpenAI was used by 65.2% of AI-buying businesses, compared with 48.9% for Anthropic.

Anthropic's SME spending share has surged

The gap between reach and spending is one of the most striking findings in the research. OpenAI reaches more SME AI buyers, but Anthropic captures twice as much of total AI spend.

The data cannot explain why businesses are spending more with Anthropic, but it demonstrates how quickly preferences within the AI market can shift.

The change is particularly dramatic when compared with previous years. In 2024, Anthropic accounted for between 1.6% and 6.6% of SME AI spend across the year, while OpenAI held more than 70% throughout the same period.

By Q1 2026, OpenAI still held the lead at 41.8%, compared with 34% for Anthropic. Just one quarter later, Anthropic had moved ahead with 54.1% of spend.

Anthropic's year-on-year SME spend was more than 40 times higher, compared with 2.4 times higher for OpenAI. Other providers are also expanding rapidly, including Perplexity, Lovable and Replit, although each is growing from a much smaller base.

The changing distribution of spending highlights how quickly the competitive landscape is evolving as SMEs gain access to an increasingly broad range of AI products.

AI coding tools are becoming a bigger part of SME spending

Another major shift can be seen in AI-powered coding tools. Platforms including Cursor, Replit and Lovable are making it possible for people without traditional coding backgrounds to create websites, software and applications using natural-language prompts.

Spending on these tools was almost non-existent at the beginning of the research period. By Q1 2026, coding tools accounted for 15.8% of all SME AI spending.

At first glance, the fall from 15.8% of AI spend in Q1 2026 to 11.6% in Q2 could suggest that the so-called “vibe coding” boom is starting to cool. However, the underlying spending tells a different story.

The coding spend index reached 2,214 in Q2 2026, compared with a baseline of 100 in Q1 2025. In other words, SMEs continued to increase their spending on AI coding tools even as those tools represented a smaller share of total AI expenditure.

The decline in share appears to be driven largely by the extraordinary growth of spending elsewhere in the AI market, particularly Anthropic.

Rather than indicating that SMEs are losing interest in AI coding, the data suggests that coding tools are being absorbed into a much broader AI spending ecosystem, alongside tools for content creation, research, customer service and business administration.

AI adoption varies significantly by industry

AI adoption isn't happening at the same pace across the UK economy. Knowledge-driven sectors such as publishing, media and consulting are leading adoption, while industries centred around physical operations and face-to-face services remain further behind.

1. Publishing leads SME AI adoption

Publishing has the highest rate of AI adoption in the dataset, with 26% of businesses using AI tools.

The sector's position reflects the number of tasks within content-led businesses that can potentially be supported by AI, from research and ideation through to editing, production and distribution.

2. Radio & Television and Consulting follow closely behind

Radio & Television and Consulting both record an AI adoption rate of 21.6%.

For media businesses, AI can support multiple stages of content production and post-production, while consulting firms can use AI across research, analysis, communication and other knowledge-intensive tasks.

3. Restaurants and food businesses remain among the least likely to use AI

At the other end of the rankings, Restaurants & Food has the lowest AI adoption rate at 4.8%, closely followed by Transport and Food Retailers at 4.9%.

The difference between the leading and lagging sectors is stark. More than one in four publishing businesses in the dataset use AI, compared with fewer than one in 20 businesses in Restaurants & Food.

The figures suggest that businesses with fewer obvious opportunities to integrate AI into physical or customer-facing operations may be adopting the technology more slowly.

London leads the UK in SME AI adoption

AI adoption also splits sharply by region.

London has the highest proportion of businesses using AI among the regions covered by the analysis, with adoption increasing from 1.8% in Q1 2023 to 16.6% in Q2 2026.

The capital's adoption rate increased by 6.9 percentage points in just one year, rising from 9.7% in Q2 2025 to 16.6% in Q2 2026.

Yorkshire & Humber has the lowest adoption rate, at 11.2% in Q2 2026, up from 1.1% in Q1 2023. However, the businesses in the region that have adopted AI record the highest median spend per AI buyer.

This highlights an important distinction between adoption and investment: having fewer businesses using AI does not necessarily mean those businesses are spending less once they adopt it.

How AI is changing the game for small businesses

Damian Brychcy, Chief Executive Officer at Capital on Tap, comments:

"I'm hugely optimistic about what AI means for small businesses. For most of my career the big companies had the edge: more people, more specialists, more budget. AI is closing that gap fast. A three-person firm can now do its own research, marketing, bookkeeping and customer service to a standard that used to need a department. More than one in eight of the small businesses in our data are already buying AI tools, and the pace is accelerating, not levelling off.

"The part that excites me most is what it gives back to owners: time. Too many small business owners spend their evenings on admin rather than on the work they started the business to do. Hand that to AI and you get your evenings back, or you spend them winning customers. Tools like Claude, Cursor, Replit and Lovable show where this is heading. People with no coding background are building their own software. Three years ago that was unthinkable.

"It also changes how a business grows. You no longer need a headcount to rise in step with revenue. The owners getting the most from this treat AI as a way to do more with the team they have, not as another subscription.

"None of that means spending on autopilot, or using it without a second thought. AI has moved from a discretionary purchase to a fixed line in the budget. More than a quarter of AI buyers now pay for two or more providers, and the balance between those providers can flip inside a single quarter. Review what you pay for, cut the duplication and be honest about whether each tool is earning its place. The same care applies to how you use it: check its output, keep sensitive business and customer data out of tools you haven't vetted, and don't hand a model decisions that need a person's judgement. A business credit card can help smooth the timing when several subscriptions land at once, but the real discipline is knowing what each one is doing for you."

Sources and methodology

Capital on Tap analysed internal card transaction data from UK SME cardholders between Q1 2023 and Q2 2026 to track the growth of AI adoption and spending. The analysis focuses on transactions with identified pure-play AI providers, measuring adoption as the proportion of SME cardholders purchasing AI tools each quarter and spending as both total AI expenditure and its share of overall card spend.

We also examined provider market share, year-on-year spending growth, multi-tool adoption and spending per AI buyer, including median, mean, p90 and p99 values. The “vibe coding” analysis groups spending across Cursor, Replit, Lovable and Windsurf. Industry and regional figures were mapped using registered post towns, allowing us to compare where AI adoption and spending are strongest across the UK.

The AI spend index uses Q1 2025 as its baseline (100). All figures reflect purchasing behaviour within the Capital on Tap SME cardholder dataset and should not be interpreted as a measure of total UK SME AI adoption.

Data collected on: 27/08/2026