How AI tools and human B2B buyers compare when choosing technology vendors — and what the gap between them means for your brand.
For the first time, Babel PR commissioned Sapio Research to run a parallel study: asking 400 B2B decision-makers and four major AI platforms the same questions about the same technology categories.
B2B buying has always been shaped by mental availability — the brands that come to mind first when a buyer enters a category win a disproportionate share of consideration.
But something has changed. Buyers are now arriving at the consideration stage with a co-pilot. AI tools are being used to validate shortlists, discover alternatives, and stress-test vendor choices.
AI tools do not search the way humans do. They synthesise. If your brand story is fragmented, outdated, or locked behind paywalls, the machine either ignores you or gets you wrong.
This research combined a human baseline survey with a structured AI audit, run in parallel across the same technology categories and buying scenarios.
400 B2B decision-makers surveyed online in April 2026. Respondents unprompted recalled top three brands for specific technology sub-categories.
Prompt testing across ChatGPT-4o, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity Pro. Incognito browsing, fresh sessions, and VPN-controlled for UK/US contexts.
Separate top-ten brand lists mapped against each other. Brands assigned points by rank to produce Human and AI Availability Scores.
The index plots each brand on a two-axis matrix. The vertical axis represents mental availability (human recall), while the horizontal axis represents algorithmic availability (AI recommendation).
That figure places AI ahead of search engines (26%), analyst reports (19%), and peer recommendation (13%) as a channel for new vendor discovery.
The telecoms technology vertical covers Mobile Network Operators, Fibre providers, and Interconnection specialists. The categories were tested across both UK and US cohorts.
Established human-recalled brands are absent from AI recommendations entirely, suggesting authority content is locked behind gated sources.
Brands appearing prominently in AI recommendations despite low human recall — a signal of strong open-web presence.
The quadrant a brand occupies determines the strategic priority — and the urgency.
You are winning in both dimensions, but this is not self-maintaining. Invest in ungated, high-authority content.
Your reputation precedes you but your data does not. Produce open-web content that contextualises your gated credentials.
AI is already recommending you. Convert that visibility into human familiarity before your competitors do.
The most urgent position. You need simultaneous investment in brand awareness and digital availability.
The full Mental Av-AI-lability Index contains detailed quadrant data for every sub-category across Telecoms, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise technology.
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