The Employment Hero SME Pulse, conducted with research firm GWI, surveyed 600 senior business leaders in Australia between April and June 2026. The quarterly survey tracks AI adoption and investment across businesses of all sizes, from micro firms with fewer than 21 employees to mid-market companies with more than 150 staff.

The headline finding is that 63 % of Australian businesses are net increasing their AI investment. But that figure masks a significant divide. Among mid-market businesses, 72 % are increasing AI spend. Among micro businesses, the equivalent figure drops to 50 %, and one in five are not using AI at all.

The gap in AI adoption between micro and mid-market businesses runs across every measure in the survey.

Across all Australian businesses, 39 % are using AI at a meaningful scale: 29 % at a company-wide enterprise level and 10 % running strategic or custom integrations. A further 25 % use AI at a departmental level, while another 25 % describe their use as limited.

For micro businesses, the picture is notably different. Just 13 % report company-wide AI use, and only 4 % are running strategic or custom implementations. Some 37 % describe their use as limited, and 22 % are not using AI in any meaningful way.

Mid-market businesses are operating on a different scale entirely. Some 36 % are running AI across the whole business and 14 % have built custom or strategic implementations. Just 16 % describe their use as limited, and only 6 % have no AI presence at all.

The pattern is consistent wherever you look in the data. Smaller businesses are meaningfully behind their larger counterparts at every level of adoption.

Investment intent reinforces the adoption picture. Some 25 % of micro businesses report no AI investment at all, compared to just 5 % of mid-market firms. Only 9 % of micro businesses are increasing AI investment significantly, against 23 % of midmarket businesses.

The survey doesn’ t ask respondents to explain the gap, but the pattern reflects well-documented dynamics in technology adoption among small businesses.

Micro businesses carry no dedicated IT, operations or HR function. The person assessing whether to adopt an AI tool is often the same person processing payroll, managing customer queries and keeping the books. Finding the time to evaluate, implement and train on new technology takes resources that most businesses under 21 staff don’ t have available in the same way larger organisations do. �

30 Intelligent SME. tech