FRANKFURT, March 5 (Reuters) - Germany's small and medium-sized companies, often described as the backbone of Europe's largest economy, have boosted the use of artificial intelligence over the last year, a survey showed on Thursday.

In a sign of rapid adoption, the DMB lobby group, representing about 30,000 "Mittelstand" companies, said 51.2% of polled companies were using or testing AI, up from 33.1% a year earlier.

• The survey was conducted together with Salesforce CRM.N in November 2025, with 700 companies taking part.

• It showed the use rate of agentic AI, an advanced form of AI that acts more autonomously on the user's behalf, jumped to 16.6% from 8.7%.

• Businesses were most likely seeking to improve efficiency when using AI, followed by productivity and cost-cutting.

• Some 37% of surveyed companies plan to widen existing AI applications or get started on AI in the first place, up from 25% at the end of 2024.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; editing by Matthias Williams)

((ludwig.burger@thomsonreuters.com))