Today, we published our latest Global AI Adoption Report. Global adoption of artificial intelligence continued to increase in the first quarter of 2026. During the quarter, AI usage increased by 1.5 percentage points from 16.3% to 17.8% of the global working-age population. The intensity of AI use in the economies with the highest penetration rates has also increased, with more than 30% of the working-age population now using AI in 26 countries.
Microsoft’s National AI Leaderboard shows the UAE continues to lead global AI adoption with 70.1%. The United States is finally starting to move up the national rankings, although it was only 24th to 21st based on 31.3% usage by the working-age population.
Notable developments this quarter include accelerating AI adoption in Asia with improved AI capabilities in Asian languages. The biggest movements were seen in South Korea, Thailand, and Japan. More broadly, the AI divide between the global North and South continued to widen this quarter, with usage now at 27.5% in the North and 15.4% in the South. These trends are discussed below, including details on the positive impact of enhanced multilingual AI capabilities in Japan.
To track all of these trends, we continue to measure AI adoption as the percentage of people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 64 who have used a generated AI product during the reporting period. This measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft Telemetry and is adjusted to reflect differences in OS and device market share, internet penetration, and country population. For detailed methodology, please refer to the AI Dissemination Technical Document..[1]
No single metric is perfect. This is no exception. Through the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, we continue to refine how we measure the global adoption of AI, including how adoption varies by country in ways that best advance priorities like scientific discovery and productivity gains. This report relies on the most powerful cross-border indicators currently available and plans to supplement it over time as additional indicators emerge and mature.
Sector-wise, the quarter saw an increase in AI coding capabilities, with software code production increasing dramatically. This was reflected in production by Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex, and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. Git pushes, where software developers publish their coding changes online, grew 78% year-over-year worldwide. Interestingly, this quarter provided additional evidence that AI coding capabilities may be driving demand for software developer employment, at least for now.
As detailed in the report, increased developer productivity reduces the cost of building software. When software demand is elastic, organizations can respond by building more software across a wider range of use cases. While it’s still too early to know the full impact of AI-assisted coding on the labor market, available data suggests that total U.S. software developer employment will reach approximately 2.2 million in 2025, an 8.5% increase from the previous year and a record high for the profession. Early data from the first quarter of 2026 shows that software developer employment in March 2026 was approximately 4% higher than in March 2025.
Download the latest Global AI Adoption Report. Explore the data here.
[1] A. Misra, J. Wang, S. McCullers, K. White, and J., L. Ferres, “Measuring AI Pervasiveness: Population Normalized Metrics to Track Global AI Usage,” November 4, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2511.02781. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2511.02781.
