Corporate AI investment reached $252.3 billion in 2024, with private investment climbing 44.5% and mergers and acquisitions up 12.1% from the previous year. The sector has experienced dramatic expansion over the past decade, with total investment growing more than thirteenfold since 2014.
Private investment in generative AI reached $33.9 billion in 2024, up 18.7% from 2023 and over 8.5 times higher than 2022 levels. The sector now represents more than 20% of all AI-related private investment.
U.S. private AI investment hit $109.1 billion in 2024, nearly 12 times higher than China’s $9.3 billion and 24 times the U.K.’s $4.5 billion. The gap is even more pronounced in generative AI, where U.S. investment exceeded the combined total of that of China and the European Union plus U.K. by $25.4 billion, up from a $21.8 billion gap in 2023.
In 2024, the proportion of survey respondents reporting AI use by their organizations jumped to 78% from 55% in 2023. Similarly, the number of respondents who reported using generative AI in at least one business function more than doubled—from 33% in 2023 to 71% last year.
Most companies that report financial impacts from using AI within a business function estimate the benefits as being at low levels. 49% of respondents whose organizations use AI in service operations report cost savings, followed by supply chain management (43%) and software engineering (41%), but most of them report cost savings of less than 10%. With regard to revenue, 71% of respondents using AI in marketing and sales report revenue gains, 63% in supply chain management, and 57% in service operations, but the most common level of revenue increases is less than 5%.
While North America maintains its leadership in organizations’ use of AI, Greater China demonstrated one of the most significant year-over-year growth rates, with a 27 percentage point increase in organizational AI use. Europe followed with a 23 percentage point increase, suggesting a rapidly evolving global AI landscape and intensifying international competition in AI implementation.
In 2023, China installed 276,300 industrial robots, six times more than Japan and 7.3 times more than the United States. Since surpassing Japan in 2013, when it accounted for 20.8% of global installations, China’s share has risen to 51.1%. While China continues to install more robots than the rest of the world combined, this margin narrowed slightly in 2023, marking a modest moderation in its dramatic expansion.
In 2017, collaborative robots represented a mere 2.8% of all new industrial robot installations, a figure that climbed to 10.5% by 2023. Similarly, 2023 saw a rise in service robot installations across all application categories, except for medical robotics. This trend indicates not just an overall increase in robot installations but also a growing emphasis on deploying robots for human-facing roles.
Microsoft announced a $1.6 billion deal to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to power AI, while Google and Amazon have also secured nuclear energy agreements to support AI operations.
Last year’s AI Index was among the first reports to highlight research showing AI’s positive impact on productivity. This year, additional studies reinforced those findings, confirming that AI boosts productivity and in most cases, helps narrow the gap between low- and high-skilled workers.
