Do investors actually use AI to research companies? What the surveys show

In short

Yes, and at a scale that is no longer niche. An Investing.com survey of 938 US retail investors, published in April 2026, found that 62% have used AI tools to help inform investment decisions. An earlier Motley Fool survey of 2,000 investors with generative AI experience found that two thirds had turned to ChatGPT for investment decisions specifically. This page collects the verified numbers in one place. It covers who uses AI, what for, how much they trust it, and what that means for a company’s investor relations.

Key facts

• In Investing.com’s April 2026 survey of 938 US retail investors, 62% said AI already plays a part in their investment decisions.

• In the same survey, 54% report experience using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT for investment-related research.

• In a Motley Fool survey of AI-experienced investors, two thirds had used ChatGPT to help make investment decisions.

• The samples are US-based. Comparable European figures are scarcer, but the behaviour is not US-specific in kind, only in how it has been measured.

How many investors use AI for investment research?

The most recent broad measurement is the Investing.com survey from April 2026. It polled 938 retail investors in the US, and 62% said AI tools have played a part in their investment decisions. This is not one-off experimentation. Roughly a quarter of respondents use AI regularly and another 27% occasionally. About one in five had not used AI yet but were considering it. That leaves only a small minority who ruled it out.

The Motley Fool’s earlier research points the same way from a different angle. It surveyed 2,000 adults who had brought generative AI into their investing process. Two thirds of them reached for ChatGPT specifically, which made it the most used tool by far. The same research found that younger and less experienced investors lean on these tools more than older, more experienced ones. So adoption skews toward the investors who are earliest in forming their views.

We hold ourselves to one point of precision. These are US samples, and European measurement is thinner so far. There is no reason to think the behaviour stops at the Atlantic. Still, a claim about “investors” should say which investors were actually surveyed, so we do.

What do investors use AI for?

Mostly research and idea generation, which is exactly the part of the process IR used to have a window into. In the Investing.com survey, more than 60% of investors use AI to research stocks or other assets. Roughly a third use it to understand market news or generate trading ideas. Around 40% say AI lets them analyse market data faster.

Read those numbers as a description of behaviour. Before an investor calls, emails or opens the IR page, a growing share of them has already asked an AI what the company does, how it has performed and what the risks are. More and more, the first impression forms inside that exchange.

Do investors trust what AI tells them?

Cautiously, and that caution tells you something. In the Investing.com survey, 54% say they trust AI-generated insights only somewhat, 20% mostly, and just 4% completely. Nearly one in four report limited or no trust. A majority say they check AI answers against other sources. At the same time, 65% of AI users say the technology has improved their market performance, so they keep using it despite their doubts.

For IR, this combination is the part to act on. Investors use AI heavily and doubt it at the same time. An answer they can verify, with a source they can open, is worth more to them than another fluent summary. Trust is the gap, and the source is how a company closes it.

What does this mean for investor relations?

Three practical things.

First, the research moved. The first version of your story an investor meets is often put together by a system you did not brief. Where those answers come from is covered in when investors ask an AI about your company, where do the answers come from.

Second, the questions moved with it. Every question asked to a general tool instead of to you is a signal you no longer see.

Third, the trust gap is your opening. Investors verify. A company that offers answers drawn from its own record, with a citation behind each point, is offering the verifiability the surveys say investors want. That is what a source-grounded assistant does, and what is a source-grounded IR assistant explains it in full. MIRA is such an assistant. It answers only from your approved company information.

The bottom line

The surveys settle whether investors really use AI. A clear majority of surveyed US retail investors already bring AI into their investment decisions, most often to research companies. Among the AI-experienced, ChatGPT leads by a distance. Investors use these tools heavily and trust them only partly. That is the opening for companies, because verifiable, source-backed answers are what this new research behaviour is missing.

Investors already check AI answers against other sources. Book a MIRA demo and we will show you MIRA answering their questions from your published documents, with a source they can open behind every line.

About the author: Sander van Prooijen is Head of Commercial Strategy at Finvictum, where he leads the European rollout of MIRA. He works with IR teams across Europe on how investors, and more and more AI tools, find and read the equity story. Connect on LinkedIn.