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Reports

Our reports

We keep track of public support for AI adoption by small businesses in Wales. We will publish regular reports and specific recommendations as the evidence develops. Our first publication is Ready for AI, an initial report with a three-page briefing.

Ripples in wet sand seen from above, with a few of the lines traced in fine light like a chart.

Initial report · October 2026

Ready for AI

An initial report on public support for AI adoption by small businesses in Wales

Felix Clarke FRSA MBA

The published evidence, with the source of every figure and the method behind the estimate.

Read the report onlineDownload the report (PDF, 3.2 MB)

What our initial report finds

The report makes six findings.

  1. Wales has an AI plan and has begun to deliver it, but the plan has no budget of its own.
  2. Little of the public money for AI in Wales has gone to helping the small businesses that make up most of the Welsh economy.
  3. Wales’s neighbours spend more per person on helping businesses adopt AI, and Wales wins less than its share of UK funding.
  4. Earlier Welsh programmes reached many small companies but rarely showed lasting gains.
  5. The risks of AI fall unevenly, and hardest on rural areas, Welsh speakers and the smallest companies.
  6. If Wales catches up with the UK’s rate of AI adoption by 2030, it could gain about £1.1bn of extra output over ten years.

The report sets out five issues for consideration as questions for discussion rather than recommendations. Our asks build on them, and we will develop them into specific recommendations.

See what we are asking for

About the £1.1bn estimate

The figure is a central estimate of extra output over 2026 to 2035, measured as gross value added in 2024 prices, if Welsh AI adoption catches up with the UK rate by 2030. It applies the Office for Budget Responsibility’s method to Welsh output, and the report sets out every step.

It is indicative and is not a forecast. It does not show that any particular programme would close the gap.

Read how the figure is calculated

The report’s author

Felix Clarke FRSA MBA

Felix Clarke FRSA MBA is a strategic adviser to established business owners and a member of the Welsh AI Collective. Over a long career in business he has helped owners with strategy, marketing and growth, and in recent years his work has turned to what artificial intelligence means for the way small and medium-sized companies are run. Through his work with small companies, he has seen at first hand how they take up new technology, where they hesitate, and what kind of help makes the difference.

Felix has spent most of his adult life living in Wales. Over the years his companies and business ideas benefited from Welsh Government initiatives that supported business owners, and he remains grateful for that help. The report Ready for AI is his way of giving something back, by supporting the next generation of business owners in Wales as they take up AI.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and holds an MBA.

This is an initial report, and further reports will follow as new figures are published. Figures are as published at 29 October 2026. Where the report says that something does not exist, it means that it could not be found in published sources.

Evidence, corrections and offers to contribute are welcome. Contact us