US AI Dominates German Companies, While Chinese and European Models See Little Use

Summary

A representative Bitkom survey of 603 German companies with at least 20 employees found that corporate AI use relies overwhelmingly on providers from the United States. ChatGPT was used by 76% of companies using AI, up from 70% the previous year; Microsoft Copilot reached 35%, and Google Gemini 28%. Meta’s Llama models were used by 8%, SAP’s Joule by 6%, and Anthropic’s Claude by 3%, while Grok was used by fewer than 1% of companies. Chinese open-weight models had little penetration: DeepSeek was used by 2% and Alibaba’s Qwen by 1%. No surveyed company reported using Perplexity or France-based Mistral. Bitkom President Ralf Wintergerst said the results raise concerns about digital sovereignty, while arguing that smaller, specialized models could create opportunities for European providers because they can be cheaper and may support more targeted applications. The article notes that Chinese open-weight models compete strongly in benchmarks, offer lower token costs, and can be hosted locally, but it remains uncertain whether this trend will materially change adoption in Germany.