07 — Demand side: AI adoption in Spanish businesses

Last updated: 2026-04-15.

A. AI adoption Spain — 5 cleanest stats

• 21.1% of Spanish firms (10+ employees) used AI in Q1 2025 — +8.7 pp YoY. INE, 22 Oct 2025
• 25.7% AI adoption in Services sector (highest of all macro-sectors), Q1 2025. INE, 22 Oct 2025
• ~50% of firms with 250+ employees use AI in 2024 (+11 pp vs 3 yrs ago). ONTSI Indicadores de uso de IA en España 2024, Apr 2025
• Spain: 9.2% enterprise AI adoption in 2023 vs 8.0% EU average, growing 9.3%/yr (~4× EU pace). EC Digital Decade Spain Country Report 2024, 2 Jul 2024
• PYMEs: 2.9% AI usage 2025 vs 2.13% 2024 (+36.2% YoY) across 68k-firm sample. IndesIA Barómetro adopción IA en PYMEs 2025
• Bonus: 70% of Spanish firms report measurable profit gains from AI, 77% productivity. EY II Barómetro Europeo IA, Jul 2025

B. Sectors buying most AI services

Ranked (ONTSI 2024 + INE Q1 2025 cross-check):

1. Information & Communications — 46.6% (ONTSI 2024).
2. ICT sub-sector — 45.0% (ONTSI 2024).
3. Scientific & Technical Activities — 26.1% (ONTSI 2024).
4. Services (aggregate) — 25.7% (INE Q1 2025).
5. Financial Services — >30% digitalised, leading "mature" sector for AI spend. Adigital/BCG 2025
6. Public Administration — biggest YoY AI jump, NextGen-driven (Adigital 2025).
7. Industry / Manufacturing — laggard on base, fastest PYME growth (IndesIA, +36% YoY 2025; Repsol, Navantia, Airbus consortium).

C. Hiring signals — Q1 2026

Spain is projected to create 52,000+ AI-related jobs in 2026; Q1 2026 already saw 14,000+ active listings aggregated across LinkedIn, InfoJobs, Tecnoempleo. Javadex/ONTSI cross-compilation 2026

Top hiring sectors (share of AI/ML offers Q1 2026): Banking/Finance 22% · Consulting 19% · Telecom 12%.

Top employers posting AI/ML roles (frequency-ranked, exact per-company counts not public):

1. BBVA — AI Engineers, LLM, data scientists (largest AI lab in ES banking)
2. Santander — ML Engineers, MLOps
3. CaixaBank — Data/AI transformation
4. Telefónica / Telefónica Tech — platform + client-facing consultants
5. Indra / Minsait — AI consulting
6. Accenture Spain — largest AI consulting bench
7. Deloitte / EY / KPMG / PwC Spain — GenAI transformation
8. Repsol — industrial AI (IndesIA)
9. NTT Data (ex-everis)
10. Capgemini Spain

LinkedIn: 3,000+ active ML roles nationwide. InfoJobs: ~100–200 per major employer. Senior ML Engineer salary band: €55–85k (Javadex 2026). LLM/AI Engineer postings +340% vs 2024.

D. PYME pain points (2025–2026)

1. Skills shortage — only 1.94% of Spanish university degrees are AI-related. IndesIA 2025
2. High implementation cost — #1 cited barrier. Banco de España EBAE Q2 2025
3. Data quality / availability — PYMEs lack clean datasets (Banco de España EBAE Q2 2025).
4. Training unmet — 78% of Spanish workers want AI training, SMEs rarely provide it. ONTSI/Red.es 30 Apr 2025
5. Regional divide — Madrid 30% firm adoption / 4.2% PYME vs nat'l avg 2.9%. CAM 3 Nov 2025
6. Cloud under-adoption — 27.2% vs EU 38.9% (DESI 2024). Limits AI deployment readiness.

E. Grant money in the pipeline

• Kit Digital: total budget €3,067M NextGenEU. AI solutions now in catalog. Unexecuted funds reinvested through and beyond 2026 (Orden TDF/39/2026). (Plan de Recuperación)
• Kit Consulting: €300M NextGenEU, for 10–249 empl firms. Grants €12k / €18k / €24k by firm size. AI Advisory is one of three priority categories.
• Combined pipeline: €3.367B, AI explicitly named in both programs.
• March 2026: Government announced additional €40M plan for SME AI use-case democratization (MTDFP).

Disbursement %: not found in public sources as of April 2026 — but regulatory reinvestment rule implies sub-100% execution (pot still substantial).

F. 5 data-backed pitch angles for a new agency

1. "From 21% to 50%: catch the mid-market wave." Large firms already ~50% adopted; mid-market (50–249) is fastest-closing gap with €24k Kit Consulting vouchers still on table.
2. "Banking + Consulting = 41% of AI hiring demand." Position as white-label ML delivery arm for tier-2 banks and boutique consultancies that can't staff fast enough.
3. "Kit Consulting fulfilment partner." €300M envelope, AI Advisory pre-funded — register as advisor, bill the state.
4. "Close the training gap." 78% of workers want AI training; only 1.94% of degrees cover it. Productized GenAI enablement for pyme workforces is an open lane.
5. "Regional arbitrage." Madrid hits 30% firm AI adoption; rest of Spain trails badly. Near-shore delivery to Valencia, Andalucía, Galicia, Aragón — lower competition, same funding.

Sources

INE · ONTSI · EC Digital Decade · Banco de España · IndesIA · EY · Adigital/BCG · AMETIC · Javadex · Plan de Recuperación · CAM · DESI.