85% of Executives Use Generative AI at Work, with Claude Adoption Reaching 35%

Comix Inc. announced the aggregated results of its “Generative AI Usage Status Survey,” conducted from April 13 to May 13, 2026. The company analyzed responses from 100 executives who had requested materials or applied for a free consultation. The results showed that 85% use generative AI for business, while Claude’s usage rate reached 35%. Generative AI adoption is shifting from the stage of “learning and trying” to a phase of “using AI safely and delegating work to it.” As background, Japan’s generative AI market in 2025 was commonly described as being led by ChatGPT, followed by Copilot, Gemini, and Claude. Among executives, however, the discussion has moved beyond whether to adopt AI and toward which tools to use, for which business tasks, and to what extent. In this survey, 85% of executives said they are already using generative AI in practical work. Going forward, companies will need more concrete support in areas such as security, quality control, prompt design, and ways to use agentic or execution-oriented AI. Key findings include: first, Claude is growing rapidly, creating a three-way competitive structure. ChatGPT had a usage rate of 39%, Claude 35%, and Gemini 31%. While external surveys in 2025 reported Claude usage at 6.4% to 13.1%, this executive survey found it had risen to 35%. Although the survey populations differ, Claude’s presence among executives is clearly increasing. Second, interest in execution-oriented AI is emerging. By extracting tool names from open-ended responses, the company found that 17% of executives mentioned Claude Code, 10% mentioned Genspark, 6% mentioned NotebookLM, and 4% mentioned developer-focused AI tools such as Cursor and Codex. Companies are beginning to move beyond simply asking conversational AI questions and are starting to have AI execute parts of document creation, research, development, and business improvement. Third, AI use cases are expanding across business functions. Areas where respondents want to use AI included data analysis and research at 81%, document creation and editing at 79%, schedule management at 65%, creative work at 63%, and meetings at 61%. Interest is spreading toward company-wide AI utilization. Regarding executives’ expectations and concerns, the most common expected benefit was reducing work time and costs, cited by 95%. Meanwhile, the top concerns were security and information leakage risk, and the quality and accuracy of outputs, both at 63%. A lack of confidence in prompt operation was also cited by 41%. These results suggest that executives are beginning to understand AI’s benefits, while operational rules, information management, and output review processes have not yet caught up. Effective AI adoption requires clear design of usage scope and verification processes by business function. The survey results can serve as reference information for executives, business leaders, HR and training managers, and DX promotion teams considering generative AI adoption. They are especially relevant for companies weighing company-wide deployment, security measures, and the introduction of execution-oriented AI. In the survey, 27% said they were interested in individual consulting or implementation support from experts. This indicates that a certain share of executives are seeking support tailored to their own business operations, beyond simply gathering information. Looking ahead, Comix Inc. will support companies in creating environments where AI can be used safely and practically through generative AI utilization support packages and corporate training. The company will continue analyzing actual usage and business challenges, and will support tool selection, guideline development, business-specific usage design, and internal adoption. The company notes that this survey targeted executives who requested materials or applied for a free consultation from Comix, and is not a statistic representative of all Japanese companies. Since the population and question format differ from external surveys, the figures should be viewed as reference values for executive interest and actual usage. Survey overview: the survey period was April 13 to May 13, 2026; respondents were 100 executives, representative directors, and representative employee-level leaders; the method was a self-administered web form questionnaire; aggregation used simple tabulation for multiple-choice questions and extracted tool names from open-ended responses; comparison sources included public surveys by Nork Research, ICT Research & Consulting, and Ragate. Comix Inc. is headquartered at 15-4 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Kondo Building 2F. Founded in September 2007, its businesses include generative AI productivity improvement support, sales support for B2B companies, and freelance professional talent referral.