Abstract In this paper, we analyze firms that participated in two waves of the French ICT survey to identify key antecedents, measured in 2018, associated with the first-time adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in 2020. The analysis shows that the presence of data security systems, ICT training for employees, and the use of websites to collect customer information are all positively associated with the likelihood of starting to use AI. The relevance of these factors varies acro