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State of AI · Index

State of AI in 2023

Generative AI’s breakout year. Within twelve months of ChatGPT’s launch, a third of organizations were already using generative AI, capital surged ~8×, and GPT-4, Claude 2, Llama 2 and Gemini reset the frontier. Every figure is linked to its primary source and dated.

By The AI Index · Updated Jun 20, 2026 · 6 min read · 7 sourced figures

Adoption jumped — driven entirely by generative AI

McKinsey’s mid-2023 survey, titled The State of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s Breakout Year, found that about one-third (33%) of organizations were already regularly using generative AI in at least one business function less than a year after ChatGPT’s debut — the fastest uptake of any technology the firm had ever tracked. Overall organizational AI use ticked up to roughly 55%, after years of being flat near 50% (McKinsey).

The frontier-model release year

2023 produced the densest sequence of major frontier-model releases in history. GPT-4 shipped on 14 March 2023, posting graduate-level results on professional exams. Claude 2 (Anthropic, July), Llama 2 (Meta, July, open weights), and Gemini 1.0 (Google DeepMind, December) followed. Each release reset state-of-the-art on benchmarks, and the gap between closed-weight leaders and the best open-weight alternative began to compress — a trend documented in detail by Stanford HAI’s AI Index.

Capital surged into generative AI

Stanford HAI’s AI Index 2024 reported that private investment specifically in generative AI reached about $25.2 billion in 2023 — roughly eight times the 2022 figure (Stanford HAI, AI Index 2024). Total private AI investment held in the high-$90B range. The headline rounds were structural: Anthropic raised multi-billion-dollar commitments from Google and Amazon; xAI was founded; Inflection, Character.ai, and Cohere each secured large rounds; and OpenAI announced a tender offer at an $80B+ valuation that closed in early 2024.

Year	Generative-AI private investment
2022	~$3B
2023	~$25.2B

Regulation arrived

On 8 December 2023, EU lawmakers reached political agreement on the EU AI Act — the first major legal framework anywhere to regulate AI by risk tier (European Parliament). Earlier the same year, the US issued an executive order on AI, and the UK hosted the inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.

“One-third of organizations adopted generative AI within a year of ChatGPT — the fastest uptake of any technology McKinsey had tracked.”

The numbers in full

Indicator	2022	2023	Source
Organizations using AI (≥1 function)	~50%	~55%	McKinsey
Regularly using generative AI	—	33%	McKinsey
Generative-AI private investment	~$3B	~$25.2B	Stanford HAI
EU AI Act political agreement	—	8 Dec 2023	EU Parliament

Figures reflect each source’s latest release. See sources below.

Frequently asked

How fast did generative AI get adopted in 2023?

About one-third (33%) of organizations were already regularly using generative AI in at least one function within a year of ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch — the fastest uptake of any technology McKinsey had tracked. (McKinsey)

Which AI models launched in 2023?

GPT-4 (March), Claude 2 (July), Llama 2 (July, open weights), and Gemini 1.0 (December) all launched in 2023, alongside major image and video models.

How much was invested in generative AI in 2023?

Private investment in generative-AI startups reached roughly $25.2 billion in 2023, an ~8× increase over 2022, per Stanford HAI’s AI Index 2024. (Stanford HAI)

Related years: 2022 · 2024 · 2025 · Full timeline 2022–2026