The Blueprint shares new data from OpenAI on Europe’s growing AI capability overhang—the gap between what frontier AI systems can do and how people, businesses and countries are using the technology. This capability overhang, ultimately, is about the opportunity for individuals, companies, and countries to participate in the Intelligence Age. Left unaddressed, it risks concentrating productivity gains in a small number of countries, sectors, and firms, while others fall behind.

Worldwide, the typical power user uses 7x more thinking capabilities—a measure of the amount of effort the model uses to respond to user queries, reflecting usage depth—than the typical user. And across more than 70 countries with the highest ChatGPT users, leading countries use 3x more thinking capabilities per person than users in lagging countries.

OpenAI’s new data reveals the EU uses 17% more thinking capabilities on average than the rest of the world. However, there are big differences between Member States, with the most intensive country using approximately 40% more thinking capabilities than the least, and nine EU countries still fall below the global average.

We see the capability overhang as the primary challenge for Europe moving forward: the countries that have a strategy to better utilize AI will be the nations that ensure that their people have the opportunity to participate in an AI global economy. The Blueprint includes recommendations for policy makers to act including the introduction of national AI-in-education frameworks, a portable AI skills accreditation scheme, and measurement of adoption and usage at national and sector levels to monitor progress.