How Many AI Companies Are There in the World? [2024]

It might look like AI is everywhere, but some industries like agriculture and construction are still opposed to digital transformations. Some regions seem more invested in AI and some prefer just “wait and see.” We can trace all that through the statistics on a number of AI companies and a number of companies using AI. Let’s dive into the present and future of AI.

Key Takeaways:

• As of 2024, there are approximately 70,000 AI companies worldwide.
• The United States leads the global AI race, with the biggest number of AI startups – about 17,500 (25% of all).
• Currently, 82% of all companies (266 million) in the world are either using or exploring the use of AI.
• OpenAI leads the AI startup landscape with $11.3 billion in funding, followed by Anthropic ($7.7B) and Databricks ($4B).
• 50% of tech unicorns in 2024 are AI-related startups, showing strong investor confidence in the sector.
• Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have 52.9 billion USD of capital spending during Q2 of 2024 with a focus on AI development and building AI infrastructure.
• AI market size has reached over 200 billion USD in 2024 and is projected to reach beyond 826 billion U.S. dollars in 2030 with a CAGR of 35.7%.

What is an AI Company?

An AI Company specializes in technologies like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, predictive analytics, and others. AI companies can consult you on the most suitable AI solutions, select them, and integrate as well as create and implement custom AI solutions or improve yours.

Top AI companies and consulting firms like Ascendix are valuable partners in your digital transformation. We can help you avoid overpaying for unnecessary functionality and create an AI tool that meets your needs perfectly and integrates with your current system seamlessly. Our AI experts think out of the box and can improve initial plans and navigate you through pitfalls with our 20+ years of experience.

How Many AI Companies Are There?

According to the latest available data, there are around 70,000 artificial intelligence companies. Approximately 25% of these, or about 17,500, are based in the United States, which is home to leading AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face. China has the second place.

How Many AI Startups Are There?

According to Stanford’s 2024 AI Index Report, there are approximately 10,095 AI startups across the top ten countries leading in artificial intelligence innovation. The United States dominates the field with 5,509 AI startups, accounting for more than half of this total. China follows with 1,446 startups, while the United Kingdom ranks third with 727 (source).

The detailed breakdown of AI startups by country is as follows:

• United States: 5,509 AI startups
• China: 1,446 AI startups
• United Kingdom: 727 AI startups
• Israel: 442 AI startups
• Canada: 397 AI startups
• France: 391 AI startups
• India: 338 AI startups
• Japan: 333 AI startups
• Germany: 319 AI startups
• Singapore: 193 AI startups

It’s important to note that these numbers specifically refer to newly funded AI startups that secured over $1.5 million in private investment between 2013 and 2023, according to Quid (2023).

As for 2024, there is no exact number of AI startups. According to different research and reports, the number of AI startups constantly fluctuates around 50K globally.

Which Country is Best for AI?

The top three countries for AI are the United States, which is leading the race with the biggest number of AI startups, China, which is ranked second but shows substantial private investment in AI, and the United Kingdom, which is third with a projected market growth of $1trillion by 2035.

The United States of America

The United States is the best country for AI because of its substantial private investments and advanced AI infrastructure. Also, despite growing competition, the US is leading the AI race, powered by Silicon Valley’s innovation ecosystem and major tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon.

Key facts:

• Between 2013 and 2022, there were 5,509 AI startups founded in the U.S.
• In 2022 alone, 524 AI startups were founded in the U.S.
• U.S. AI startups attracted $47 billion in non-governmental funding in 2022.

However, the US government has established strict ethical regulations towards AI development as well as security standards. Last year alone, the total number of AI-related regulations grew by 56.3%. It might be challenging to meet all requirements at first, but with the help of AI consultants, it’s much easier.

China

• China ranks second globally in terms of AI startups.
• Between 2013 and 2022, China had 1,446 AI startups founded.
• Holds 11% of top-tier AI researchers.
• $95 billion in private investment (2022-2023).

United Kingdom:

• Ranks 3rd after the US and China in the global AI market.
• Current market valuation: $21 billion.
• Projected growth: Expected to reach $1 trillion by 2035.

The List of Top AI Startups 2024

So far this year, 35% of U.S. startup investment has gone to AI-related companies, per Crunchbase data. At the very top of the list of AI startups in 2024 is OpenAI, which has cemented its status as the largest AI research organization in the world and has landed 11.3 billion USD in 2024. Anthropic and Hugging Face rank further among ML startups due to successfully creating decent rivals for ChatGPT. Meanwhile, LLM startups such as Cohere and Character.ai are advancing conversational AI, making these technologies more accessible to businesses and developers.

Many large investors have shifted their attention to two particular fastest-growing AI startups: Pika and Mistral AI. Pika grew from a tiny 13-person team to a $250 million valuation in under a year using generative AI for video creation. Meanwhile, Mistral AI became a leader among LLM startups and was valued at $2 billion in less than 12 months with its alternative approach to ML research and models like the Le Chat chatbot.

Top generative AI startups are Stability AI, Synthesia, and Tome. Stability, valued at $1 billion after raising $123.8 million since 2020, develops widely used image generation models like Stable Diffusion. London-based AI startup Synthesia uses $156.6 million in funding to synthesize realistic videos from text in multiple languages. Meanwhile, AI startup Tome has gathered $81 million to develop AI-powered presentation solutions that streamline visual content creation for remote and hybrid workers.

AI Market Size and Growth Rate

Key Takeaways:

• Market Growth: The AI market is projected to surpass $200 billion in 2024 and exceed $826 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 35.7%.
• Regional Investments: North America leads AI investments at 37%, followed by Asia-Pacific at 26%. The U.S. and China are the top players.
• Promising Segments: Services (especially SaaS) are set to be the most lucrative, driven by the convenience of cloud solutions.
• Healthcare Growth: The healthcare AI market is expected to grow from $19.27 billion in 2023 to $26.69 billion in 2024 due to increasing data availability and the potential for improved patient outcomes.
• Industry Applications: The media and entertainment sectors are leading AI adoption, particularly with generative AI, while retail is utilizing AI for enhanced customer experiences.

What is the AI Market Size in 2024?

According to the latest estimations, the AI market size has reached over 200 billion USD in 2024 so far. This rapid growth is expected to maintain and reach beyond 826 billion U.S. dollars in 2030 with a CAGR of 35.7%. Particularly, the US AI market is forecast to reach $299.64 billion by 2026 (source).

The biggest investment streams and the biggest number of AI companies are from the Asia-Pacific (26%) and North American (37%) regions with the United States and China as leaders. Latin America possesses about 14% and Europe 24%. According to Grand View Research, services (SaaS in particular) will be the most promising segment in the global AI market, with software in second place and hardware in third. That’s because cloud-based solutions are more convenient and do not require as many resources as software and hardware.

AI Market Size Breakdown by AI Technology

The size of the market for a particular AI technology is directly related to its perceived usefulness and applicability across various industries. A larger market size suggests higher demand.

AI Market Size 2024 by Technology (Billion USD)

Machine learning has the biggest market share among all AI technologies – almost 80 billion USD because it’s used in almost every available AI solution in the current market and has the potential to remain the basis for future ones for tasks like prediction, classification, and optimization.

Natural Language Processing is a basis for chatbots, sentiment analysis, language translation, and other applications with growing demand in customer service, marketing, and content creation. That’s why NLP has the second biggest market size of 36.42 billion USD among AI technologies. However, even there, machine learning is necessary as well as in generative AI.

Also, machine learning is the most mature technology which brings fewer investment risks and more knowledgeable specialists in the labor market. And again, ML is a huge accelerator for improving newer technologies like Computer Vision with a 25.80 billion USD market size.

The relatively smaller market size of AI Robotics (17 Billion USD) compared to other AI sectors like Machine Learning or Computer Vision isn’t necessarily due to a lack of interest or potential, but rather because of high complexity and even higher development costs.

Also, the applications of AI robotics have been primarily confined to industrial settings (e.g., manufacturing, and assembly lines). Expanding into new domains like healthcare, service industries, and consumer markets requires overcoming challenges related to cost, safety, and user acceptance.

As for 2024, even Tesla’s Optimus robots, the most expensive and advanced example of AI robotics for now, are assisted by humans. After it was revealed, the excitement of investors and the overall public was undermined. This incident is definitely going to influence the trust in AI robotics potential in 2025.

AI is versatile, but some industries have more use of it than others. The world has seen the potential of generative AI in the informational field, and after years of building elaborate policies and double-checking security, core industries have started to rely on AI solutions with more trust.

AI Market Size Breakdown by Industry

AI companies in healthcare are gaining momentum, with a 26.69 billion USD market size in 2024, driven by vast amounts of available data and the potential for improved patient outcomes, such as enhancing diagnostic accuracy, optimizing treatment plans, and predicting patient risks. Also, healthcare is often criticized because of lagging administrative efficiency, so many companies and governments see the potential to partially fix it through AI automation of scheduling, reminders, etc.

The media and entertainment industries are on top of the chart in terms of AI market share with 17.65 billion USD because of the widely spread generative AI there. Social media content possesses the lion’s share of it.

The retail industry’s interest in AI is driven by mostly online marketplaces that steadily nurture its market size from almost 10 billion USD in 2023 to about 12 billion in 2024. AI-powered recommendation engines and chatbots enhance customer experience and drive sales. It can also contribute to inventory management and supply chain optimization by predicting demand.

Transportation, education, and construction lag behind because of huge security concerns, strict regulations, and less data availability.

Number of Companies Using AI

266 million companies are either using or exploring the use of AI. Having done the simple math, it’s over 82% of all companies in the world.

Among them, 92% of Fortune 500 firms have adopted AI. For example, Salesforce has embraced AI through two significant initiatives: Einstein and Agentforce. Now, users can use the help of advanced AI assistants for enhanced communication, data analysis, and automation. Walmart, Netflix, Coca-Cola, Ford, and many other industry giants reap the benefits of AI adoption.

Even if you as a customer do not see an AI touch, it is typically involved in increasing operational efficiency, facilitating communication, predictive market analytics, etc. The latest IBM AI Adoption Index reveals some unexpected patterns in how different countries are embracing artificial intelligence.

AI Adoption by Country

Surprisingly, it’s not Silicon Valley leading the AI revolution, but Asian countries. India tops the chart at a 59% adoption rate, followed closely by the UAE (58%), Singapore (53%), and China (50%). The United States, despite being home to tech giants like Google and Microsoft, shows only a 33% adoption rate.

Even more surprisingly, European tech powerhouses like Germany (29%) and France (26%) lag significantly behind Asian countries. European countries like Germany, France, and Italy are used to relying on traditional technologies or paper so they are much less eager to adopt AI. Italian government even temporarily banned ChatGPT in 2022 because of major security and ethical concerns. Australia has 29% AI adoption rate and Canada stays at 27%.

AI adoption by Industry in the USA

AI adoption by industries in different countries also varies, depending on existing development levels, priorities, and how opposed to changes the industry is. Since the United States is a leader in a number of AI companies with a 25% share (about 17,500 AI companies) and has already developed ethical and responsible AI practices, let’s see how well overall AI adoption is going there.

Information Technology leads the pack at 17%, which isn’t surprising. Professional services follow at 13%, leveraging AI for everything from data analytics to client service automation. Education (9%), Finance & Insurance (7%) and Real Estate (8%) show promising adoption rates, suggesting these traditionally conservative sectors are slowly but surely undergoing digital transformation.

Entertainment shows only a 6% adoption rate because the vast usage of generative AI in social media has not been included in this category. Slower adopters are critical sectors like healthcare (5%), manufacturing (3%), construction (2%), and transportation (1%) hindered by strict regulations.

Our Experience of AI Adoption

Ascendix, a Dallas-based AI development company, has always been pioneering new technologies and we’ve successfully added AI assistance to our internal processes. Our teams use AI tools like Fireflies.ai. for notetaking during calls. Our Internal AI Assistant helps with meeting summarization and answering the questions.

Meanwhile, our HR AI chatbot has been helping our employees with simple queries, freeing our HR managers a little. Also, we encourage our departments to adopt other AI tools available on the market to facilitate their activities. This way, GitHub Copilot or other AI assistants for coding help our development team to write clearer code faster. We believe AI will not replace humans but help us to reach better outcomes.

How Much Do Companies Invest in AI?

Investment tendencies towards AI have already been dubbed Silicon Valley’s trillion-dollar leap of faith. According to different calculations, the total investment amount in AI has already almost reached this bar.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has described his firm as “the most capital-intensive startup in Silicon Valley history” and it’s true since it has raised 13 billion USD in 2024 so far. Dario Amodei, the CEO of the rival start-up Anthropic, has predicted that a single AI model (such as, say, GPT-6) could cost $100 billion to train by 2027.

The global data center buildup over the next few years could require trillions of dollars from tech companies, utilities, and other industries, according to a July report from Moody’s Ratings.

From another perspective, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, claims that “the risk of underinvesting is dramatically greater than the risk of overinvesting” and explains the high numbers by spending money on infrastructure, hardware, and staff training. That’s why top AI startups have been counting new funding not in millions but billions of US dollars.

The latest quarterly data reveals $52.9 billion in combined capital expenditure from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet, showcasing the intensity of the current tech arms race.

Meta has ramped up its capital investments significantly by heavily investing in its metaverse vision and AI capabilities. Microsoft and Alphabet show steady, calculated increases in their infrastructure spending. Amazon maintains the first position in spending, focusing on its vast warehouse network and AWS infrastructure.

According to Noah Smith, we are currently at the first stage – building a foundation, which is the most expensive and time-consuming process. Unsurprisingly, sixty percent of a new CNBC Technology Executive Council survey respondents described their new AI investments as “accelerating.” Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that all those expenses will ever pay off.

The Future of AI

AI seems to be losing popularity, but not funding. 50% of tech unicorns in 2024 are AI-related startups and attract billions of investment funds. The number of AI companies and products has been increasing and so has the advertisement. Try to look through social media or news feeds without at least one promotion of AI as an all-your-problem solver. The thing is that the effectiveness of AI is difficult to measure, so AI startups need to convince users of its viability.

Another burning question is what will happen when Large Language Models like ChatGPT exhaust the available data for training. That’s why tech experts advise focusing on data quality, not quantity. It caused a significant increase in investment in data-related AI startups.

AI Impact on the Future of Jobs

The number of AI companies is increasing. As for 2024, it’s about 70K AI companies in the world. They bring new work positions and new job titles to the labor market. Unfortunately, there are still not enough knowledgeable AI specialists to fill all available positions. According to the Indeed survey, “AI” is being mentioned in job requirements more frequently, but not in CVs. This skill gap has not been eliminated yet, but about 80% of companies prioritize educating their existing staff about AI in the few next years, according to a WEF report.

Employees are also concerned about AI influence, especially:

• having their salary reduced – 72%
• not getting promoted if they don’t have AI skills – 67%
• falling behind at work if they don’t use an AI platform – 66%

The ILO Occupation Employment statistics show that concerns are not groundless. Over 30 million people have lost their jobs because of automation. Those are mostly data entry clerks, secretaries, cashiers, ticket clerks, material-recording and stock-keeping clerks, post office clerks, bank tellers, and related clerks. They have not been entirely removed, but automation of a significant part of their work allowed companies to hire fewer such specialists.

Ascendix – Your Reliable Partner in AI Adoption

For 20 years, Ascendix has been a leader in business automation for the real estate industry. We’ve closely followed the evolution of AI and become experts in integrating it into versatile solutions. We’ve worked with prominent firms like JLL and Flibco, along with 300+ clients globally. Our 5 international offices provide us with a broad range of insights that we incorporate into our solutions.

How Can Ascendix Help?

• Don’t you know where to start with AI? Contact our AI consultants to get a strategic roadmap and assess your AI readiness.
• Do you already have an AI solution you’d like to implement? Our team will smoothly integrate it into your existing system.
• Does your current solution already meet your needs? We can make it better. After a thorough tech audit, you’ll get a comprehensive report of issues and probable solutions.
• Do you have an idea in mind, but not resources to bring it to life? We can develop AI solutions according to your needs and vision. Also, our experts always think out of the box and can bring improvement ideas to your initial plan.
• Are you interested in generative AI exactly? We provide generative AI consulting services, too.