Global Private AI Investment Growth (by Country)
The US remains the dominant Country with China exceptionally close behind.
In 2019, global private AI investment was over $70B, with AI-related startup investments over $37B, M&A $34B, IPOs $5B, and Minority Stake valued around $2B.
Globally, investment in AI startups continues its steady ascent. From a total of $1.3B raised in 2010 to over $40.4B in 2018 (with $37.4B in 2019 as of November 4th), funding has increased at an average annual growth rate of over 48%.
Global Private AI Investment Growth (Sector Adoption)
58% of large companies surveyed report adopting AI in at least one function or business unit in 2019, up from 47% in 2018.
Only 19% of large companies surveyed say their organizations are taking steps to mitigate risks associated with explainability of their algorithms, and 13% are mitigating risks to equity and fairness, such as algorithmic bias and discrimination.
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) received the majority of global investment last year with $7.7B (9.9% of the total), followed by Drug, Cancer and Therapy ($4.7B, more than 6.1), Facial Recognition ($4.7B, 6.0%), Video Content ($3.6B, 4.5%), and Fraud Detection and Finance ($3.1B, 3.9%).
Robot process automation grew most rapidly (over $1B in 2018), followed by supply chain management (over $500M in 2018), and industrial automation (over $500M in 2018).
Semiconductor chips, facial recognition, real estate, quantum computing, crypto and trading operations have also experienced substantial growth in terms of global private investment.
Raymond Perrault, Yoav Shoham, Erik Brynjolfsson, Jack Clark, John Etchemendy, Barbara Grosz, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, Saurabh
Mishra, and Juan Carlos Niebles, “The AI Index 2019 Annual Report”, AI Index Steering Committee, Human-Centered AI Institute,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, December 2019.
(c) 2019 by Stanford University, “The AI Index 2019 Annual Report” is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NoDerivatives 4.0 License (International)