A Tale of Two Economies: High-Adoption and Low-Adoption Sectors
The aggregate figure—42% of Australian SMEs using AI—masks a far more fragmented reality. Adoption rates vary dramatically across industries, creating a patchwork of leaders, laggards, and a large middle ground where the technology’s potential remains largely untapped.
The Leaders: Property, Finance, and Business Services
Property Services leads Australian SME AI adoption at 69%, followed by Finance and Insurance at 65% and Business Services at 61%. These sectors share common characteristics: high volumes of customer interaction, document-heavy workflows, and clear opportunities for automation in areas like lead nurturing, compliance support, and client communication. In these industries, AI has moved from novelty to operational necessity, and the returns are visible in time savings, faster response times, and improved decision support.
The Laggards: Retail, Transport, and Construction
At the other end of the spectrum, Retail stands at 22%, Transport and Storage at 21%, and Manufacturing at 35%. The National AI Centre’s data reinforces this divide: fewer than 30% of businesses in Construction and Agriculture are currently adopting AI, compared with more than half in Health, Education, and Services. The difference, the Centre notes, “isn’t capability, it is context. Businesses need to see themselves in the story of AI adoption”.
For many retail and transport operators, the perceived relevance of AI is low. More than half of non-adopting businesses (54%) said AI is not relevant to their business—a finding that is particularly pronounced in industries where routine tasks are physical rather than digital.
The Middle Ground: Experimentation Without Transformation
Between these poles lies a large group of SMEs that have adopted AI tools but have not redesigned their workflows. KPMG research cited in industry analysis found that Australian organisations lead the world in AI governance adoption, but lag global peers in AI-led productivity and workflow change. Only 35% of Australian organisations said they prioritised AI-driven productivity, compared with 42% globally.
This middle ground is where the greatest opportunity—and risk—lies. Businesses that remain in the experimentation phase may find themselves outpaced by sector peers who have embedded AI into core operations. The National AI Centre’s tracker shows that among adopters, broad integration is rising while limited, one-off use is declining. The direction of travel is clear: the sectors and businesses that move fastest from tools to workflows will define the competitive landscape of Australian small business in 2026 and beyond.