Canadian Small Business Owners Embracing AI For Wide Variety of Functions, Believe AI Investments Will Yield Positive Impact

Toronto, Canada, August 15, 2025 — Small business owners are embracing AI in a variety of different ways and believe their investments in AI will yield fruit within the next year, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted for TD Bank Group.

Small business owners are most likely to be using AI for marketing content creation (49%) and document summarization (48%), followed by data analysis and reporting (45%), capturing meeting notes (42%), and market research or trend analysis (41%). Other uses, though not as prevalent, are personalized customer service recommendations (38%), customer support (37%), financial management (33%), sales forecasting (33%) and hiring/recruiting (30%). 

Moreover, another 25% to 33% of small business owners are considering the use of AI for these various functions in the next year – suggesting that further growth in the utilization of AI is likely on the horizon. 

A majority (53%) of small business owners expect their investments in AI to have a positive impact (20% very/33% somewhat) over the next 12 months. While 11% believe it’s still too early to tell, just 19% believe there will be little to no impact. Just two in ten (18%) small business owners aren’t planning on making investments in AI in the next year.

The poll shows that larger small businesses – those with more than $500K in higher revenue – are even more likely than their smaller counterparts to be utilizing AI, particularly when it comes to customer support (47% of larger small businesses vs. 33% of smaller businesses), data analysis and reporting (53% vs. 41%), sales forecasting (42% vs. 30%), market research or trend analysis (51% vs. 38%) and personalized customer recommendations (48% vs. 34%). 

Moreover, larger small business owners are more likely to be making investments in AI (89% vs. 80%), and to believe that those investments will yield positive benefits in the next year (61% vs. 50%).

About the study

These are the findings of an Ipsos survey conducted on behalf of TD Bank Group that was fielded between June 16th, 2025 to June 25th, 2025. A total of n=400 Canadian small business owners/partners participated in the survey which was fielded via the Ipsos' panel. All participants had an annual revenue less than $10 million, and their business had less than 30 employees. The results are considered accurate to within +/- 6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what the results would be had all small-businesses in Canada been polled.

For more information on this Factum, please contact:
Sean Simpson
Senior Vice President, Ipsos Public Affairs
[email protected]

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