The Global Ledger

Meeker's 2025 report documents the global distribution of AI adoption with the granularity her framework demands. North America leads with approximately 40% of knowledge workers reporting regular AI use by mid-2025. East Asia follows closely, with South Korea and Japan at the high end. Western Europe lags by 12–18 months, constrained more by regulatory caution than infrastructure. Sub-Saharan Africa sits below 5%, constrained by everything simultaneously — infrastructure, device access, connectivity costs, language support, institutional capacity. The numbers describe a familiar landscape. Every prior technology Meeker mapped showed similar distribution patterns: early adoption concentrated in wealthy nations, diffusion proceeding outward along paths determined by infrastructure investment and institutional readiness. The pattern approaches the status of a structural law: technology flows downhill, along gradients of existing advantage. AI adds variables — capital concentration, language bias, cognitive dependency — that may make this inequality more persistent than in prior cycles.