Does AI boost firm productivity? A web scraping and LLMs approach

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely seen as a transformative technology with the potential to reshape firm productivity across sectors. However, empirical evidence on its actual impact at the firm level remains limited, mainly due to the lack of extensive firm-level data. Leveraging web scraping and Large Language Models (LLMs), this study develops a novel framework to detect and quantify AI adoption among 62,525 Spanish firms. The approach distinguishes between firms that adopt AI and those that integrate it intensively across business functions, constructing both binary and continuous measures of AI use. Using entropy-balanced instrumental variable estimations to address endogeneity, we find that AI-adopting firms exhibit approximately 53%–55% higher sales and 48% higher value added than comparable non-adopters. Moreover, increasing the intensity of AI use is associated with an even larger productivity premium of 74%–76% in sales and up to 67% in value added, highlighting the substantial returns from deeper AI integration. In dynamic terms, AI adoption is linked to 9%–13% faster annual sales growth. These findings provide evidence that AI significantly enhances firm performance, underscoring its role as a key driver of productivity growth.