New JRC-OECD report World corporate top R&D investors: Shaping the future of technologies and AI

A recently published JRC report jointly prepared by the TIC 2030 group of the European Commission-JRC and by the STI group of the OECD, shed light on the role of these key players in shaping the future of technologies and of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in particular.

The report "World corporate top R&D investors: Shaping the future of technologies and AI" was presented at CONCORDi conference and brings together data on patents, trademarks and scientific publications of the world’s top corporate R&D investors to provide new insights on the role of these key industrial actors play in shaping the future of technologies and of Artificial Intelligence in particular.

This publication is targeting a diverse audience including the scientific community, industry representatives, practitioners and policy makers.

Its aim is to provide a useful source of data and analysis to all those interested in getting a better understanding of the scientific and technological activities of key industry players, particularly in the field of AI.

Most of the data underlying the analysis presented in the report are made publicly available, in an effort to spur further analysis.

Some of the most important findings of this report are:

• the central role played by the world top R&D corporate investors in leading R&D investment and technology development in once more confirmed. We found that the top 2000 R&D investors own almost two third of patents filed at the largest IP offices worldwide. A large proportion of top patent and trademark owners are headquartered in Asian economies, while European and US companies lead in terms of scientific publications;
• the increase in technological diversification of Japanese and Chinese companies, which are now approaching the more technological diversified European and US based companies;
• with regard to AI related developments, firms in ICT sector located in Japan, China and Korea take the lead while European companies rank higher in terms of basic research in the field.
• the analysis of the results offers further evidence on the pervasiveness of AI related technologies and the fast diffusion in non ICT related sectors. More specifically, JRC found that 'Transport equipment' companies are particularly active when it comes to advancing the science base related to AI.

Artificial Intelligence technologies

Over the past few years, AI technologies and applications became widespread affecting our daily lives and reshaping completely industrial sectors.

AI is a fast growing, evolving field with the potential to revolutionise our economies and to contribute to tackle global challenges related to health, transport and the environment and has thus attracted the interest of businesses and policy makers alike.

Further information

IRI Concord 2019: download the full report.

The dataset will be available through the OECD website.