37 Percent of Power Users Make AI Their Primary Finance Tool
37 Percent of Power Users Make AI Their Primary Finance Tool
Publish Date: 2026-02-12 04:06:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
The novelty phase of conversational artificial intelligence has officially ended, giving way to a more formidable market phase: structural reliance. While nearly half of U.S. consumers have now interfaced with AI assistants, the real story isn’t the influx of new users — it’s the stickiness among the incumbents.
The February 2026 “Agentic AI Report” by PYMNTS Intelligence noted that while 49% of adult Americans had used a conversational AI assistant by December, growth in usage is no longer being driven by new-user acquisition. Based on a U.S. Census-balanced survey of 2,439 U.S. adult consumers conducted between Dec. 9, 2025, and Jan. 5, 2026, the report showed that growth is instead being driven by intensifying engagement among existing users, who are embedding AI into daily workflows, from shopping discovery to financial management.
Adoption Stabilizes, Engagement Deepens
Between October and December overall, the report found that AI usage rates remained largely flat across demographic groups. That plateau indicates that while adoption levels have reached roughly half of U.S. adults, incremental growth now faces more skeptical or reluctant consumers.
The segmentation data reveals a clear structure. Power users, defined as those performing 27 or more distinct AI-driven tasks per month, represent 10% of all consumers and 19% of millennials.
Mainstream users account for 27% of consumers, while light users make up 10%. Holdouts, who have not used AI and cite specific reasons for avoiding it, still represent 53% of the population and 72% of baby boomers.
What differentiates these groups is not frequency alone, but breadth. Light users average roughly two activities per month. Mainstream users average eight. Power users increased reliance on the tech and their total activity count from 25 in September to 27 in December.
Advertisement: Scroll to Continue
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred…
