Building harmonised measures of global AI adoption: A coalition of international organisations and AI companies

A coalition of intergovernmental organisations — including the World Bank Group, IMF, and OECD — and leading AI and tech companies is building the Global AI Adoption Index, facilitated by the Development Data Partnership (DDP), to give the world its first harmonised picture of AI adoption. The coalition has committed to developing a shared methodology that would draw on privacy-protected company data to track consumer chat and API adoption across countries, normalised against population, income, connectivity, and other national baselines. The coalition was introduced at the LSE Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences 2026.

AI is diffusing rapidly, and governments and multilateral institutions are directing billions toward digital infrastructure, skills programmes, and labour policy. But they are acting with limited evidence on how AI adoption varies across countries and sectors.

The Global AI Adoption Index is a joint initiative of intergovernmental organisations, including the World Bank Group, IMF, and OECD, and leading AI companies – including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and OpenRouter. Unlike measures built on surveys or proxies, these organisations are working together on a harmonised method that leverages privacy protected company data to track consumer chat and API adoption across countries, normalised against population, income, connectivity, and other national baselines. These usage indicators would be supplemented with measures of conditions that shape adoption, including digital infrastructure, labour markets, and languages, drawing on complementary data and research from partners including Meta, LinkedIn, Ookla, and GitHub.

The undertaking, facilitated by the Development Data Partnership (DDP), is a significant coordination challenge: every major AI company holds a piece of this picture in its own logs, but no single company can see the whole. Turning proprietary, competitively sensitive data from rival companies into one shared, comparable public good has not been attempted at this scale before. DDP's approach draws on eight years of experience brokering public-private data partnerships built to protect commercial sensitivity while creating development impact.

DDP partner intergovernmental organisations are contributing stakeholder insights and analytical work to shape the final indicators, and additional companies are in active discussion for participation. DDP is also convening sectoral consultations across intergovernmental organisations to inform indicator design. Separately, DDP is developing a complementary US AI Adoption Index with state-level detail, with the Partnership on AI leading consultations with civil society groups.

Government agencies, national statistical offices, intergovernmental organisations, researchers, civil society organisations, and companies will all be able to draw on the Index to benchmark adoption, target investment, and inform policy and decision-making.

Haishan Fu, Chief Statistician, The World Bank Group, said:

"No single organisation – public or private – can see the full picture of how AI is being adopted around the world. That's why the leading AI companies have committed to designing this Global AI Adoption Index with us, leveraging the Development Data Partnership's proven legal, governance, and technical frameworks for data collaboration."

The Index is presently under development, with the first round of statistics to be jointly disseminated by the World Bank, OECD, and IMF in mid-2027. Interested collaborators are welcome to express their interest to the DDP Secretariat: datapartnership@worldbank.org.

The work is supported by the Gates Foundation and Schmidt Sciences.

Find out more about the Global AI Adoption Index

About the Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences

The Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences is an annual flagship event bringing together leaders across government, industry, academia, and civil society from around the world.

Organised by the LSE Data Science Institute, the Global Forum aims to convene international dialogue at the intersection of AI and the social sciences and to mobilise expertise, resources, and partnerships to ensure AI serves human and societal needs.

The inaugural edition of the Global Forum will take place on 16 and 17 September 2026 with a thematic focus on how AI is reshaping work and what governments, firms, and workers must do to prepare for the changes ahead.