Investment in artificial intelligence
Big ideas get big investments. This is true for AI companies. Today, everything revolves around futuristic ideas, and we are becoming adored fans of AI projects. In this blog, I want to delve into numbers, the main areas of AI, and also define the role of investment in this ecosystem.
Total global investment in AI, including private equity, public offerings, mergers, and acquisitions, increased by 40% in 2020 compared to 2019 and amounted to $67.9 billion. Stanford University published such data in its report. As a result of the pandemic, there has been a consolidation of the industry and an increase in activity in the field of mergers and acquisitions. For this reason, overall corporate investment in AI has increased. Mergers and acquisitions accounted for the bulk of total investment in 2020, up 121.7% over 2019. There have been several high-profile AI acquisitions in 2020, including the acquisition of NVIDIA Mellanox Technologies and Capgemini from Altran Technologies. The geography of investment activities in the field of AI is in line with our expectations. The United States remains the leading country in private investment with more than $23.6 billion in funding in 2020, followed by China ($9.9 billion) and the United Kingdom ($1.9 billion).
And the most interesting thing. What areas of AI receive the most funding? The table shows the 10 main directions in which the largest volume of private investment in 2020 came and the corresponding amount of investment in 2019.
Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2021
‘Drugs, Cancer, Molecular, Drug Discovery’ tops the list with over $13.8 billion in private investment in AI — 4.5 times more than in 2019. They are followed by ‘Autonomous Vehicles, Fleet, Autonomous Driving, Road’ ($4.5 billion) and ‘Students, Courses, Edtech, English language’ ($4.1 billion). We can also notice a significant increase in private investment in ‘Games, Fans, Gaming, Football’ between 2019 and 2020. This is largely driven by several rounds of funding for gaming and sports startups in the US and South Korea.
There are also Ukrainian startups that have built their business on solutions using artificial intelligence. Among them are Elomia, Outloud.ai, Propertymate, and others. For example, the Ukrainian startup Minect.ai demines the fields of Donbas using artificial intelligence. Their neural network scans visual data from different sources and then gives a result on the number and type of mines on the territory. It is the world’s first artificial intelligence-based mine and projectile recognition system. The startup received a state grant and continues to develop in Ukraine.
The possibilities of artificial intelligence are diverse and unlimited, so this area is promising and will gain momentum. Support for AI projects in Ukraine should be stimulated because this is foreign capital and the name of the country at the international level. Today, the Ukrainian technological potential is great, it is important not to miss the moment.
