Top 100 R&D Spenders

For over 20 years, the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard has monitored and benchmarked the performance of leading global companies against leading EU companies. 

In their 2023 report, they looked at the world's top 2,500 R&D (Research & Development) spenders. The report notes that while the industrial and automotive sectors saw declining R&D shares, ICT services (software, hardware, and health sector) showed continued strength.  

AI R&D Spenders

The reports include companies from these regions: 

• US: 828 companies 
• EU:  368 companies
• China: 680 companies
• Japan: 230 companies
• Rest of the world: 399 companies 

We analyzed the top 100 R&D US spenders. Here is what we found: 

• 63% of the top 100 are AI companies. 

• The top 100 R&D companies in the US spent 427 billion dollars on R&D in 2022.
• The top 5 companies contributed 35% ($150 billion) of that spending. 

Non-AI R&D Spenders

63 of the Top 100 R&D Spenders Were AI Companies

Average R&D Spending

In our analysis of the top 100 R&D spenders in the US, we found that the average total spending on R&D was $4105 million. On average, AI companies spent significantly more than non-AI companies —  AI companies spent $4921 million dollars on R&D, while non-AI companies spent $2714 million dollars.

Average R&D Spending — AI vs. Non-AI Companies (Top 100 US Companies)

‍

Average R&D Growth Percentage

Further, through our analysis of the top 100 R&D spenders in the US, we found that the average growth percentage in R&D spending from the previous year was 14.46%. 

AI companies’ average percentage of growth in R&D spending increased by 1.5% more than non-AI companies — in the previous year, AI companies’ average growth percentage was 15.1%, whereas the average percentage of growth for non-AI companies was 13.4%. 

Average R&D Growth — AI vs. Non-AI Companies (Top 100 US Companies)

Average Number of Employees 

We also looked at the average number of employees among the top 100 R&D spenders for AI companies vs. non-AI companies. The average number of employees highlights the workforce size and the potential human resource investment differences. Our findings:

• The average number of employees for the Top R&D AI spenders is 63,986.
• The average number of employees for the Top R&D non-AI spenders is 43,337.
• The total average number of employees for the Top 100 R&D companies is 56,345.

Average Number of Employees: AI vs. Non-AI Companies

Sources: EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard

Methodology and Resources 

Here is the process we used to gather and analyze our data. To obtain the percentages of AI companies from all of our data lists: 

• First, companies were manually labeled to identify whether they were an AI company or not. 
• Next, facebook/bart-large-mnli was used to classify each company based on their Prospectus/About me. 
• After reviewing the list of companies from the classifier, a second round of manual checking was applied. This involved looking at the company Prospectus/About me and their websites to further curate the list of companies. 

All data was collected from cited sources, the official SEC EDGAR database, and/or both for cross-referencing and checking data accuracy and integrity.