Small businesses are not waiting around to see if AI matters. They are already buying it, trying it, and in many cases paying for it.

That is the blunt takeaway from a new Thryv survey released Thursday morning. The company says AI adoption among U.S. small businesses has risen to 66%, up from 55% a year ago. But the same survey says 70% of owners still need more training to use the tools effectively.

That gap matters more than the adoption number.

If a tool is cheap enough to buy but hard enough to use that owners never build a habit around it, the technology becomes another subscription, not an operating advantage. Thryv’s data suggests that is exactly where a lot of Main Street is landing right now.

The survey points to a few reasons the shift is accelerating anyway. Among small business owners who use AI, 92% say it saves time. Nearly four in five expect to get back between 11 and 60 hours per month, which is not a rounding error for a business that runs on thin margins and short staffing.

The money is moving too. More than half of respondents, 53%, say they are spending at least $100 per month on AI tools. That sounds modest on paper, but it is still a meaningful line item for a small business that has to watch every recurring charge.

There is also a hiring signal buried in the survey that says a lot about where owners think the market is headed. Thryv says 46% of respondents would choose AI software over a new hire if both could do the same job equally well. That is a sharp move from 38% last year, and it suggests owners are not just experimenting. They are starting to see software as a labor substitute, at least for some tasks.

Still, the training issue is the real headline. Owners are not struggling because they hate AI. The survey says 86% are at least somewhat comfortable using it. They are struggling because comfort is not the same thing as workflow design. A quick prompt can draft an email. It cannot automatically decide which tasks should be automated, who should review output, or how to keep mistakes from becoming customer-facing problems.

That is why this report feels more useful than a generic AI hype note. It says the market has moved past "Should I try this?" and into "How do I make it work without wasting time or money?"

For small business owners, the answer is probably not more tools. It is one clear use case, one trained team, and one process that gets repeated until it sticks.

The winners will not be the businesses that can say they use AI. They will be the ones that can say AI actually changed how the work gets done.

Sources: Business Wire / Thryv press release, Morningstar syndication of the same release.