Insights from MYOB’s 2026 Business Monitor show that 36% of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) overall are proactively using AI in their business – up slightly on 2025 (32%), but uptake remains much lower among small businesses with one to five employees (30%) compared to businesses with 20 or more in their team (64%).
The data also shows that with greater adoption of AI comes greater reliance, with 92% of medium businesses with 20 or more employees saying they’d feel workload, productivity or cost impacts if they stopped using AI immediately. In contrast, less than half (49%) of small businesses with one to five employees expected they would feel those impacts.
An outlier to the small versus medium trends seen in the data, however, are sole operators, who have a stronger AI adoption rate (36%) than employing small businesses. Likewise, a higher proportion of this cohort (64%) believe they would experience workload, productivity or cost impacts if their AI use stopped imminently.
MYOB Chief Customer Officer, Dean Chadwick explains: “Small businesses are tight on time and resources, so any solution that can help take care of the admin and offer efficiency gains as they look to grow their business, can make all the difference.
“Sole operators in particular, recognise the potential AI offers to help them do more with less, and they’re actively investing in AI solutions to help them achieve just that. This is reflected in the data from this year’s Monitor which shows a higher proportion of these owner-operator businesses had a dedicated budget for AI this year, than other small employing businesses.”
From content to contracts and everything in between
In terms of how AI is being applied by SME operators and in what areas of the business, use is skewed toward content-driven tasks, led by social media and marketing content (38%), copywriting of marketing materials and press releases (28%), copywriting technical documents, reports or training materials (26%), and market, trend and risk analysis (25%).
“AI use among New Zealand businesses is still grounded in the practical, but there’s a clear difference emerging in AI maturity,” says Dean.
“Many smaller businesses are using AI to get through day-to-day tasks faster and in the case of sole operators, do the heavy lifting on work that enables business owners to focus on the bigger picture. In medium-sized firms, AI use is more integrated across the wider business, built into the broader people, risk and operational workflows.
“What our insights also show us is that these differences in the adoption and application of AI are also starting to show up in the commercial impact AI is having for businesses.”
Asked what impact AI has had on their margins over the last 12 months, 28% of SMEs overall said using AI has helped them maintain their margins, while just under one-in-five (19%) said their margins had improved on a year ago. In comparison, a significant 55% of medium-sized businesses said AI had helped to maintain margins and 23% said margins had improved.
“As the data highlights, AI use among New Zealand SMEs is no longer moving at one pace. For smaller employing operators, it’s still largely about saving time and easing admin pressure. For medium-sized businesses – and to some extent, sole operators – AI is becoming a bigger part of how the business runs, and that’s where the gains in productivity and margin resilience start to become more visible,” explains Dean.
“For SMEs exploring AI, the key is to focus on practical use cases where the value is clear and immediate, then build from there. Crucial to this success, however, is enabling and empowering their teams along the way.
“While that journey will look different for every business, the direction of travel is becoming clearer. Used well, AI can free up capacity, strengthen confidence and give businesses and their employees more headroom to focus on customers, strategy and the work that moves the business forward.”
ENDS