Romania's enterprise AI adoption rate is 5.2%, according to Eurostat's latest ICT Enterprise Survey, one of the lowest in the EU, well behind the 20% EU27 average and a long way from Denmark's 42%. On paper, that reads like a country still on the sidelines of the AI shift. 

But numbers like that only tell you who's filled out a survey checkbox for "using AI technology." They don't tell you who's in the room asking how to actually do it. So we looked at our own data instead, the 3,200+ professionals who bought or claimed a ticket to AI Expo Europe 2025, and a different picture shows up.

The appetite is already here

Romania might rank near the bottom of the EU on formal AI adoption, but it's also one of the fastest-growing: adoption has more than quadrupled in recent years, putting it third in the EU for growth even from a small base. Our own attendee data backs that up on the ground. Over 3,200 professionals came through the door in 2025, and when we break down who they were, the story isn't "AI curious hobbyists", it's the people actually responsible for deciding whether their company adopts AI: 

  • IT, Cloud & Security was the single largest industry represented (nearly a fifth of all attendees), followed closely by Marketing/Advertising/PR, Software, and Data, Analytics & AI itself.

  • By job title, the room skewed toward decision-makers, not spectators: CEOs and Founders made up a meaningfully larger share of paid attendance than any other title, alongside engineers, project managers, and directors actually building or buying the tools.

Companies are already voting with their wallets

The clearest signal of real adoption intent isn't who shows up once, it's who sends people back, repeatedly, at their own expense. In our 2025 data, 176 companies bought more than one ticket, accounting for well over half of all tickets sold. IBM, Oracle, Adobe, Gameloft Romania, and a cluster of gaming and fintech companies weren't sending one curious employee, they were sending teams.

That's not what "5.2% adoption" looks like. That's what it looks like right before the adoption curve bends upward.

Where the real money is going

When we isolate paying attendees (as opposed to comped speakers, sponsors, and students), spend concentrates in a few clear places: Marketing/Advertising/PR led total ticket revenue, with IT/Cloud/Security close behind by volume, and Gaming and Finance/Banking showing the highest average spend per attendee, a signal that these industries aren't just curious, they're budgeting for it.

The gap that matters

Here's the honest part of the story: if Romania is genuinely the fastest-improving AI market in the EU, and the appetite inside the room is this strong, the opportunity isn't just to keep serving that local audience, it's to bring the rest of Europe's AI builders and adopters into the same room. That's the whole premise behind AI Expo Europe in 2026: put the people building AI and the companies ready to adopt it at the same table, at a moment when the market data says the curve is about to move, not after it already has. 

The technology works. The talent is here, in growing numbers each year. The question every company in that 5.2% (soon to be far more) is asking isn't "should we use AI" anymore, it's "where does it actually pay off for us." That's the conversation AI Expo Europe exists to host.

 

Sources: Eurostat, "Use of artificial intelligence in enterprises," ICT Enterprise Survey, 2025 reference year, published December 2025. AI Expo Europe 2025 own analysis