Mittelstand - Themes

In 2025, SMEs in Germany made significantly greater use of paid cloud computing services than in 2021, with an increase of 12 percentage points. This places German SMEs slightly above the EU average.
The use of software and infrastructure from the digital “cloud” is also developing dynamically among large companies in Germany: adoption rose from 71% in 2021 to 86% in 2025. This puts them, too, slightly above the EU average.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has gained significant momentum in recent years. In 2025, around one in four SMEs in Germany used AI applications – not only more than the EU average (19%), but also a clear increase compared to the previous year (19%). However, large enterprises in Germany continue to use AI far more frequently than SMEs. Their adoption rate stands at 57%, slightly above the EU average (55%). As a result, the gap in AI usage between SMEs and large companies continues to widen.

Around four in ten SMEs in Germany (42%) used Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in 2025 to plan and manage their business processes. This is close to the EU average (45%). Large enterprises in Germany, however, use this software to digitally connect their company departments far more frequently (89%), which also aligns with the EU average. Compared with previous years, the use of ERP systems has stagnated in both SMEs and larger companies.

In 2025, more than one in three SMEs in Germany had a “high” to “very high” digital intensity. Very high digital intensity means that companies implement at least 10 out of 12 surveyed digitalization measures, while high intensity corresponds to 7 to 9 measures (see the data source notes for further information). German SMEs are largely similar in this regard to their EU counterparts. Nevertheless, digital intensity increases with company size: around 84% of large enterprises in Germany have a (very) high digital intensity (83% EU-wide).