The Vertical AI Adoption Index — where every industry stands

Operators do not need another generic AI scoreboard. They need to know whether their vertical is already compounding or still waiting for someone else to prove the workflows. That is what the Vertical AI Adoption Index is for: a quarterly reading of where industries stand so a founder, GM, or practice lead can see the distance between the frontier and the floor before they buy tools or open a build.

The Index tracks adoption across twelve industries. The Q1 2026 edition — the published baseline every later report measures against — puts E-Commerce at the top of the board at 44%. Construction sits at 8%, the most underserved vertical in the series and the widest published gap. Between those poles sit Real Estate at 31%, Finance & Accounting at 26%, Law Firms at 22%, Healthcare at 18%, and Restaurants at 11%. Remaining verticals ship with their playbooks and quarterly updates; we do not invent rates that have not been published.

What the rates are saying

A high rate is not a trophy. It is evidence that product, support, and growth stacks are already in production in that vertical — which means late movers are competing against operators who already shortened response time, documentation load, or reorder cycles. A low rate is not a verdict that the work is impossible. It is a signal that the workflows with the most leverage are still underbuilt relative to the rest of the board.

Construction at 8% is the clearest example. Estimating, subcontractor coordination, project tracking, and safety documentation remain manual for most operators even while adjacent industries have already automated lead response or close cycles. E-Commerce at 44% shows the opposite pattern: the post-Shopify growth stack — product copy, email flows, support, inventory alerts — is already common enough that “trying AI” is no longer a differentiator by itself.

How operators should use the Index

Read your vertical first. Then read one adjacent vertical that already moves faster. The point is not to copy someone else’s stack wholesale. The point is to see which classes of workflow — lead response, documentation, forecasting, compliance paperwork — tend to move first when a vertical starts compounding.

RossiLabs publishes the Index for operators, not analysts. The research desk pairs each rate with a vertical playbook: stack notes, a 30-day roadmap, an ROI worksheet, and pitfalls drawn from real builds. The company site surfaces the Index and releases; implementation lives under RossiLabs when research alone is not enough. VisualsByRossi covers the market-facing layer when the constraint is what customers see. RossiOne is the combined membership when systems and media have to move on one relationship.

What this release is

This June 2026 newsroom piece is the public marker that the Index is live as an operator surface — not a private deck, not a one-off chart. Adoption rates across twelve industries are published. E-Commerce leads at 44%. Construction remains the most underserved vertical at 8%. The full Index, and what it means for each documented vertical, is available from the research desk.

Next step

Open the Vertical AI Adoption Index on the research page, then enter your vertical playbook on RossiLabs. If the Index shows a gap and you are ready to close it with a scoped build, talk to us — bring the workflow that actually burns time, not a wishlist of every model on the market.