The 2025 results provide a solid and well-structured picture of the digital landscape in Italy. The market continues to grow, confirming the increasingly central role of digital technologies in the development of companies and industrial sectors. ICT services maintain a positive momentum, while artificial intelligence stands out as the primary driver of innovation, with applications now widely adopted and measurable impacts on processes, decision-making, and productivity.
2025 tells the story of a country that invests, experiments, and consolidates. Skills are growing, infrastructures are strengthening, and concrete use cases are multiplying. At the same time, alongside the progress achieved, differences emerge across industries, company sizes, and operating contexts, confirming that digital transformation is underway but moving at different speeds and requires strong governance capabilities and a medium-term vision.
Italy’s digital system: real growth, fragile balance
In 2025, Italy’s digital landscape can no longer be interpreted as a simple sum of technologies, but as a dynamic balance between infrastructures, services, and contextual factors. Market growth is real and sustained, yet it unfolds within a framework that shapes its stability and trajectory. The central role of ICT services and advanced digital solutions is now well established, but their evolution is increasingly influenced by factors that extend beyond the strictly technological domain.
In particular, the slowdown of traditional digital infrastructures, rising energy costs, and the growing footprint of data centers introduce constraints that affect the overall sustainability of the system. Added to this are uncertainties related to tariffs and the international geopolitical context, making the landscape more complex and less predictable than in the past.
It is within this unstable balance that the adoption of artificial intelligence also takes place. AI does not evolve in isolation, but reflects the strength—or the weaknesses – of the digital system as a whole. The speed of adoption and the ability to generate value therefore depend not only on technological innovation, but also on the infrastructural, economic, and industrial conditions in which that innovation takes shape.
Source: Report Anitec-Assinform "Il Digitale in Italia" - Il Sole 24 Ore "Il digitale italiano cresce, ma sul filo: frenato da energia e dazi"
AI moves beyond the exploratory phase and becomes infrastructure
During 2025, artificial intelligence made a significant leap in maturity within the Italian context. Available analyses identify AI as the most dynamic segment of the entire digital market, with growth rates above the average and an already measurable contribution in terms of productivity, estimated at around 1.8% at a macroeconomic level.
For a portion of companies- particularly the more structured ones – AI has moved beyond the exploratory phase and has become a stable part of decision-making and operational processes. Generative AI has played a decisive role in this shift, accelerating adoption and expanding the number of business functions involved, well beyond the traditional boundaries of IT.
Within this landscape, the most established AI applications among Italian companies are primarily concentrated in a few key areas:
- managerial decision support, through predictive models and advanced data analytics systems;
- operational process optimization, from planning to resource management;
- automation of repetitive cognitive activities, with direct effects on efficiency;
- enhancement of the information asset, through the use of generative AI to enable access to and use of corporate knowledge.
These elements point to a structural shift. AI is no longer an experimental technology, but an integrated lever within the operations of more advanced organizations. At the same time, the benefits remain concentrated in only part of the productive fabric, confirming that the ability to turn AI into value depends directly on data, skills, and overall digital maturity.
Source: Report Anitec-Assinform "Il Digitale in Italia" - Il Sole 24 Ore "L’Ai nelle imprese è entrata nella fase matura ma l’Italia corre a due velocità" e "Chi vince la sfida dell'Ai? Non chi sviluppa, ma chi diffonde"
A country moving at two speeds
The adoption of artificial intelligence across Italy’s productive system does not follow a uniform path. Data and analyses consistently describe a country moving at two speeds. AI maturity is concentrated mainly among larger companies and more structured sectors, while a significant share of SMEs still struggle to move beyond an initial or experimental phase.
This is not merely a difference in investment levels, but a deeper gap involving skills, organizational capabilities, and the integration of AI into decision-making processes. In this context, AI tends to amplify existing disparities: where digital maturity is already high, it further accelerates competitiveness; where solid foundations are lacking, it risks remaining a partial or unrealized opportunity.
| DIMENSION | COMPANIES | SMEs |
| AI Approach | strategic and integrated | Tactical or experimental |
| Application areas | Core processes and decisions | Point solutions or support activities |
| Data availability | High and structured | Fragmented and uneven |
| Internal skills | Dedicated teams | Reliance on external support |
| Measurable impacts | Productivity and efficiency | Limited or indirect benefits |
This gap is not new, but in 2025 it becomes more evident as AI enters a phase of greater concreteness and wider adoption. Technology alone does not reduce disparities; rather, it tends to reflect – and in some cases amplify – the level of digital and organizational maturity of companies.
Source: Il Sole 24 Ore "L’AI nelle imprese è entrata nella fase matura ma l’Italia corre a due velocità" and "AI, l'Italia accelera ma resta il nodo competenze"
The real challenge: skills, organization, and governance capability
At the root of the gap shaping the adoption of artificial intelligence in Italy lies not so much the availability of technology, but rather companies’ ability to develop and orchestrate a set of fundamental enabling factors. Analyses converge on a key point: the main barrier to AI evolution is not technical, but related to skills, organization, and governance capability.
Increasingly, mature AI adoption is associated with the combined presence of a few key elements:
- broad-based skills, not limited to specialist profiles but extending to managerial and operational levels;
- high-quality, structured, and integrated data, a necessary condition for reliable and scalable models;
- appropriate organizational models, capable of embedding AI into decision-making and production processes;
- clear governance, essential to transform AI from an experimental initiative into a strategic lever.
In the absence of these factors, many projects remain confined to pilot initiatives. Where skills, data, and organizational structures are present and well coordinated, impacts are more tangible and measurable.
Source: Il Sole 24 Ore "AI, l'Italia accelera ma resta il nodo competenze", "Chi vince la sfida dell'Ai? Non chi sviluppa, ma chi diffonde" and "La consulenza scommette sulla spinta dell’AI per la crescita delle imprese"
From potential to value: why enablement models are needed
The transition from the potential of artificial intelligence to the creation of real value requires more than technology adoption alone. Evidence shows that AI truly delivers results when it is embedded in business processes and placed within a coherent framework that aligns strategy, data, and operations.
In this context, enablement models play a central role, understood as structured paths that help companies manage the complexity of transformation:
- integration of AI into core processes;
- development of hybrid skills, combining technology and business;
- alignment between strategy and data;
- governance of organizational change.
It is within this space that AI stops being a collection of experimental initiatives and becomes an integral part of how the company operates.
Source: Il Sole 24 Ore "Chi vince la sfida dell'Ai? Non chi sviluppa, ma chi diffonde" and "La consulenza scommette sulla spinta dell’AI per la crescita delle imprese"
Looking ahead to 2026: why it is a pivotal year
Looking ahead to 2026, the picture that emerges is not one of a new wave of technological breakthroughs, but rather of a phase where diffusion, scalability, and the ability to turn investments into results become critical. Forecasts point to continued growth of the Italian digital market in 2026 as well, with an estimated value of €86.7 billion, in line with the positive trajectory for the 2025–2028 period, albeit with a gradual slowdown (average annual growth of around +2.8% through 2028).
In this context, some drivers remain more dynamic than others. Artificial intelligence, for example, is expected to grow by +24% over the 2025–2028 period, reaching an estimated market value of around €1.2 billion. A pace well above the average, confirming its pervasive role across IT, operational, and decision-making processes.
2026 will therefore be a year of choices. Not so much about whether to invest, but about how to do so: with which priorities, with what approach, and with what governance capability. The issue is no longer access to technology, but its sustainable integration into the real economy.
Source: Report Anitec-Assinform "Il Digitale in Italia" - Il Sole 24 Ore "Il digitale italiano cresce, ma sul filo: frenato da energia e dazi"
Governing digital and AI: from potential to value with the Quin Group
In this context, the contribution of those who support companies along their digital transformation and artificial intelligence adoption journeys becomes increasingly strategic. Governing these evolutions requires experience, method, and a holistic view capable of connecting technology, processes, data, and organization, while avoiding fragmented or purely experimental approaches.
The Quin Group, formed through the combination of Quin’s and QGS’s capabilities, operates with this very objective: to support companies through a structured approach, translating digital and AI opportunities into concrete solutions that are integrated and sustainable over time.
