AIA survey finds 74% of architecture firms used AI in day-to-day operations in 2025

Nearly three in four U.S. architecture firms used artificial intelligence in their day-to-day operations in 2025. That is the sharpest figure in The Business of Architecture 2026, the American Institute of Architects' firm survey report, which Medical Construction and Design covered on November 13. Built on data from nearly 900 firms, the report puts the profession's 2025 gross billings at $121.7 billion, with 54% of revenue tied to new construction.

The catch is the calendar. The survey describes 2025, and AIA's own monthly billings index has spent 2026 describing something softer. For a firm principal setting next year's budget for staff, software and ownership transition, that makes the report most useful as a fixed baseline: a clear picture of the year before the slowdown, against which a firm can measure how far it has moved.

AI is now common; formal strategy is the newer story

The report pairs the 74% figure with a description of rapid AI adoption across firms of all sizes, alongside growing efforts to develop formal AI strategies and workflows. AIA frames that use as spanning design, project delivery and business management. The public summary does not give an earlier all-firm rate, so the pace of the climb can't be pinned down from it. What it does suggest is that firms are moving from trying tools to writing down how they use them.

Using a tool and getting something from it are different measurements. The report counts firms using AI in day-to-day operations; its public summary does not measure what that use returns. For firms that have bought licenses, the open question is whether the hours saved show up anywhere in the books.

The closest outside view on that question comes from Deltek's 2026 Clarity study. Just 38% of A&E firms reported a measurable positive business impact from AI, even though 70% had adopted it, according to ScaleArc's summary of the May 12 release. ScaleArc publishes practice-management guidance for small firms. If architecture firms look anything like that broader sample, many of the firms in AIA's 74% may be paying for tools that have not yet shown a visible return.

That gap suggests the more telling number for a firm leader is the one AIA tracks alongside raw use: how many firms have a written AI strategy and defined workflows. Adoption counts capture use at any depth. A strategy implies someone decided which tasks the tools own and how the result gets checked.

The strongest objection to reading much into the climb is definitional. AIA's sample is architecture firms; Deltek's spans A&E practices, and "using AI" can mean anything from meeting notes to design options. There's also little evidence yet on price. ScaleArc found no survey showing AI changing what architects charge, and argued the gain shows up as capacity: hours freed for proposals, site visits and client work.

Who keeps that capacity depends on how the firm charges. When AIA asked special questions in January 2026, 73% of firms said they regularly used a stipulated sum, and 56% of leaders found fees harder to negotiate than they were two years earlier. Under a fixed fee, the firm keeps any hour it saves, which suggests that for most practices the capacity argument leads straight to margin. Small firms were the exception. For 33% of them, hourly billing was the most profitable method, so unless the saved time goes to new work, it could just mean smaller invoices.

How firms use that time also matters. In 2025, Deltek put the median win rate across A&E firms at 50%. The following year, proposal submissions rose 32% even as win rates fell. That evidence suggests extra proposal capacity does not turn into more work by itself.

A record of 2025, read in a 2026 slowdown

AIA's report page lists, among related resources, its September 2026 billings index report, titled "Architecture firm billings slump deepens." That report says firm revenue is down by an average of 3% from 2025, expected to remain flat in 2027.

The two documents don't contradict each other so much as sit in sequence. The survey's language about growth in billings and profitability describes calendar 2025. The index describes 2026 month by month. Neither the public report summary nor the index page spells out how samples and definitions differ, so the safe reading is chronological.

The index's August reading, released September 23, shows where the softness sits. On a scale where 50 means no change, project inquiries held just above the line while billings and new design contracts fell below it.

Inquiries above 50 alongside contracts below it suggests clients are still asking about work but signing less of it. The same release put consumer prices up 3.4% on the year, which means a flat 2027 in nominal revenue would be a decline in real terms. AIA's nonresidential forecast for 2027 is positive, though ScaleArc argues that improvement does not reach residential studios.

That has a practical consequence for any finance lead running a benchmark this quarter. A firm comparing its 2026 numbers against the report's 2025 figures should expect to look weaker even if it has held its own against peers. The fairer test is whether the firm's decline is shallower or steeper than the index's direction.

Benchmarks that hold up across firm sizes

The most portable number in the report is $152,000 in average net billings per employee for 2025. Revenue per head normalizes across firm sizes better than total billings does, though AIA notes financial performance varies significantly by size, so the average is a starting point. AIA sells a companion benchmarking tool that breaks 40 survey questions down by region, firm size and specialization; members get 40% off, and the full report, listed at $289, is free to members.

Revenue mix is the second reference point. With 54% of 2025 revenue from new construction, the remaining 46% came from other work, by subtraction. For firms that track their own split between new and existing buildings, that line offers a 2025 comparison. The new report also flags shifts across institutional, commercial, residential and data center work, without a share figure in the public summary.

An earlier edition gives that 46% some context. The AIA Firm Survey Report 2024 found renovation, retrofit, addition and preservation work produced 45% of firms' gross billings in 2023. The categories and bases are not identical, so the pair reads as a rough reference rather than a trend, but it suggests existing-building work has stayed close to half the profession's business. In residential, AIA's Home Design Trends panel rated additions and alterations at a net +38% and kitchen and bath at +34% in Q2 2026, against minus 25% for first-time and affordable homes.

Profitability is harder to benchmark from the public material. The 2026 summary reports growth in profitability, with financial performance varying significantly by firm size, but gives no headline margin. Finance leads who want a margin reference point will need the full report.

Earlier figures give some reference points in the meantime. The 2024 edition reported profitability for 2023 at 13.2% of net billings. Outside surveys come in higher. PSMJ's median operating profit for year-end 2025 was 20.5% of net revenue, the highest its survey has recorded. Deltek's 47th Clarity study, which covered 896 A&E firms, reported 16.7%, down from 21.4%.

ScaleArc warns that the PSMJ and Deltek samples consist of firms that benchmark themselves and buy practice-management software, which may be why their margins are higher than AIA's. For the smallest practices, an AIA special question from March 2024 put profitability for firms billing under $250,000 at 9.0%, compared with 11.5% for all firms. ScaleArc only has that figure from a secondary summary.

Small firms feel the gap first

Backlog is one place a slowdown could show first, especially at smaller firms. A studio with three months of work on the books has far less room to absorb a lost project than one with six.

Those numbers are close to the real ones. AIA reported on July 22 that backlog at firms billing under $250,000 dropped from 4.9 months to 3.1 months in Q2 2026. No other size group fell as sharply, and the figure for all firms was 6.3 months. ScaleArc puts it bluntly: with three months of work, a studio is one lost project away from being empty.

That's why the report's quieter findings deserve attention. AIA tracks the share of firms with ownership transition plans, written business plans and business continuity plans, and describes a growing focus on all three. It also reports broader use of resilience and climate adaptation measures in project delivery, tracks the share of firms pursuing sustainability and performance rating standards, and documents continued gains in the share of staff and firm leaders who are women or from racially and ethnically diverse groups. For owners of smaller practices, a written continuity plan matters most when backlog is thin and the next commission is uncertain.

Questions for the 2027 budget

For firm leaders planning around a flat 2027, the report and the index together suggest a few concrete checks, offered here as editorial recommendations rather than AIA guidance:

• Where does net billings per employee sit against the $152,000 2025 average for firms of similar size and region, and is the gap widening in 2026?
• Does the firm have a written AI strategy that names the tasks AI handles and how output is checked, or only tool licenses?
• On fixed-fee projects, are hours saved by AI being kept as margin or spent on proposals the firm is unlikely to win?
• How many months of backlog does the firm carry, and does a written continuity or ownership transition plan cover a stretch below three months?