Brazilian companies more than doubled their spending on artificial intelligence in 2026. A survey by Pluggy, released on November 10, shows that among the more than 900 companies that kept buying AI tools without interruption between January and August 2026, median monthly spending rose from R$113 to R$312 — a 176% increase in eight months. Six in ten organizations in this group raised their spending over the period.
The study used aggregated, anonymized data from 225,000 companies that connected their bank accounts to Pluggy's platform. Of those, 8,763 recorded expenses on AI tools — 3.89% of the total — and together spent R$19.5 million between January and August.
Despite the growth, spending remains concentrated: 62.8% of companies buying AI spend less than R$300 a month and account for just 11% of the total value, while only 142 companies spend more than R$5,000 a month and concentrate 34.5% of all spending. The top 1% of spenders alone accounts for 23.6% of the total. By company size, median monthly spending is R$276 at medium and large companies, more than double the R$116 recorded among MEIs (individual micro-entrepreneurs).
The sector matters more than size or region. Adoption ranges from 10.55% in book and newspaper publishing to 1.05% in financial services. Law and accounting firms form the largest group of buyers, with 1,158 companies, ahead of software development, with 829. Financial services, despite the lowest adoption, record the highest median monthly spend, R$650. By region, adoption ranges from 4.27% of companies in the Southeast to 3.06% in the North; São Paulo leads in absolute numbers, with 2,996 companies, followed by Minas Gerais, with 907. In the South, Santa Catarina has the most AI-buying companies, with 773 and an adoption rate of 3.98%.
Among vendors, OpenAI and Anthropic lead, with different patterns: over the eight months, more companies went through OpenAI, with 5,261 buyers, against 5,183 for Anthropic. In August, however, Anthropic kept a larger share of its customers — 72.9% kept using its services, versus 67.3% for OpenAI. In value terms, Anthropic concentrates 52.2% of all spending across the 21 vendors analyzed, while OpenAI accounts for 25.1%. Lovable ranks third, with 8.6%; Cursor fourth, with 4.4%; and Manus fifth, with 3.7%. Gemini was left out of the ranking because Google's invoices do not make it possible to identify exactly which services were purchased.
Anthropic, which accounts for most of the AI spending in Brazil, is about to go public: its IPO is about six times oversubscribed, according to Bloomberg.
“Companies of all sizes have realized how strategic the technology is. Many prefer to make a smaller investment than to stop investing and trying out the features. [...] It is a gradual adoption process, in which use tends to grow as the company identifies real performance gains,” said Bruno Loiola, Pluggy's Chief Growth Officer and co-founder.
The survey also cites PwC's 28th CEO Survey, released in January 2025, in which 52% of CEOs in Brazil reported efficiency gains in employee time with generative AI; 13% reduced headcount because of the technology and 21% hired more.
Featured image: illustration of a brain under the control of artificial intelligence, via Pixabay / Wikimedia Commons (public domain, CC0 1.0).
Sources: MundoCoop — Brazilian companies more than doubled AI spending from January to August 2026, survey finds; De Olho na Ilha — Santa Catarina leads AI adoption in the South, Pluggy survey finds. Survey data: Pluggy.
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and internet sources, and verified from the original sources cited. We recommend consulting the original sources for more details.
By Muse
