Why start with data
Owners of industrial companies in the US Southeast ask us one question more than any other. Are my competitors doing this?
It is a fair question. Nobody wants to be last. But the honest answer starts with data, not a pitch. So here is what public data says about the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee, and what it does and does not tell you.
All figures below come from our State of AI by State report, October 2026 edition. It uses two public sources: the Ramp AI Index for August 2026 and the Anthropic AI Usage Index for August 4 to 11, 2025. We did not collect either dataset. Ranks and monthly changes are our arithmetic.
What the state numbers say
Nationally, 56.13% of businesses on Ramp's platform made a paid AI transaction in August 2026. That was up 0.42 points on July and 11.15 points on a year earlier.
| State | Rank of 51 | Paid AI adoption | Change since July | Ramp sample | Claude usage index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 17 | 52.87% | +1.54 pp | 1,844 | 0.77 |
| Tennessee | 18 | 52.37% | +1.45 pp | 1,310 | 0.54 |
| Georgia | 24 | 51.19% | +2.41 pp | 1,717 | 0.80 |
| South Carolina | 39 | 46.86% | +0.89 pp | 717 | 0.42 |
A few things stand out.
All four states sit below the national figure. North Carolina and Tennessee are in the upper middle of the board. North Carolina moved up four places since July.
Georgia posted one of the five largest gains in the country from July to August. Catch-up is real in parts of the South.
South Carolina is lower on both measures. The sample is smaller, so its monthly moves are less reliable.
The Claude usage index compares Claude.ai use with each state's share of the working-age population. 1.00 is parity. All four states are below it. That index covers consumer plans in a different period from the Ramp data, so read the two side by side as structure, not cause and effect.
What the data does not say
Be careful with these numbers. Ramp's sample is businesses that use Ramp, which leans toward firms that are already digital. Free tools and personal accounts do not show up. The data covers every industry, not just manufacturing. And it measures whether a business paid for AI, not whether it changed how the work gets done.
So the data cannot tell you what the steel service center down the road is doing. It does suggest that about half of similar businesses in these states are paying for some AI tool. Paying for a seat and moving a number are different things.
What that means for an industrial company
Think about who gains first in a plant. The inside sales rep retyping RFQs. The estimator buried in drawings. The dispatcher reading tender emails. The service writer turning tech notes into warranty claims. Their hardest hour is mostly reading and typing, and that is where Claude helps.
For the owner, a state crossing 50% means little on its own. What counts is whether one process that sets the pace of your business got faster, and whether you can measure it.
| Vertical | A first process worth looking at |
|---|---|
| Steel service centers | RFQ to quote. See our steel service centers page |
| Metal fabricators | Bid takeoff from drawings and specs. See metal fabricators |
| Equipment dealers | Warranty claims and parts lookup. See equipment dealers |
| Industrial freight | Tender intake and paperwork. See industrial freight |
| Machine shops | RFQ and print to quote. See heavy manufacturing |
We do not have a client in any of these industrial verticals yet. We say that plainly. Our approved proof is from THG, an independent insurance agency in Wilmington, NC, where a client proposal went from 5 days to 5 minutes.
Questions to ask before you spend
State data can start a conversation in your leadership team. It should not end one. Before you buy more seats or hire anyone, ask which process sets the pace of the business, who does it best today, and how you would know in 60 days that it got better. If nobody can answer that last part, the work is not ready yet, and that is useful to know.
How to start
Pick one process with an owner. Count it for a week: how many, how long, how many errors. That baseline matters more than any state ranking.
We are an Anthropic Partner based in Wilmington, NC. If you are in the Carolinas, Georgia or Tennessee, see our locations page and our local AI consulting pages. Or start with the free Operating Diagnostic. If it is not the right time, we will say so.