In this article we are going to list the 15 largest AI companies in the world. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 10 largest AI companies in the world. Before we start discussing this topic in greater detail, first let’s establish the exact meaning of AI, to ensure we’re all on the same page. AI refers to of course, artificial intelligence. We know that human beings are the most intelligent animals by far in the world, having grown our capabilities through evolution. This is what we call natural intelligence. Now, we have got to the point where we want to create machines which can mimic our intelligence, or in many occasions, even surpass it. This is what we call artificial intelligence, which is basically the creation of intelligent machines, or machine which can capture, emulate and even exceed human cognition.
While you might think that artificial intelligence is a 21st century field, and even in the 21st century, only applicable to perhaps the last decade, you would actually be quite wrong. Artificial intelligence has been around for decades; at least from the 1950s if not earlier. And the earlier innovations and even more recent innovations were surprisingly not from private companies pioneering in this technology but from public research. This is because during the Cold War, the US kept practicing new, innovative and some would say mind boggling ideas which led to research and development in the field of artificial intelligence.
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Of course, most major breakthroughs in the industry have come about in recent years, as digitization has sped up across the world. This digitization has generally gone through smoothly, though now countries (especially Europe) are considering breaking up major companies such as Facebook. Even though it didn’t receive as much attention earlier, most governments especially in advanced economies are realizing that artificial intelligence is probably the most important technology in the 21st century and mastery in this field will give them a significant advantage over other countries lagging behind. However, while Europe is lagging behind in what exactly it wants from AI, other countries such as China have already got a clear goal in mind and how their development of artificial intelligence will enable them to establish even more dominance against other countries. The US, the most powerful nation in the world and also the most powerful military in the world, has an advantage here as well in terms of research as some of the biggest tech companies such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) are leading this research and development.
Even smaller countries such as Israel are major players in this industry, as Israel has more artificial intelligence companies than Germany or France put together. Unsurprisingly however, the US has by far the largest market share in this industry at 40%, followed by China and then Israel. Israel has always been technologically advanced and has also always been under the threat of attack from its neighbors due its controversial and often illegal activities in Palestine, which has led to it needing to develop such technologies thanks to the aid it receives from the US. However, as Arab states have begun normalizing ties with Israel, perhaps tensions in the Middle East will deflate with time. Based on a report by Asgard Capital who checked nearly 3,500 artificial intelligence companies, nearly 500 were based in San Francisco, the hub of technology in the US, followed by London and then of course, Tel Aviv. Many of these companies may not be selling artificial intelligence, but they’re involved in the development so they can improve their own processes and supply chains, thereby creating efficiency and maximum value.
Nowadays, ever since the discovery of Deep Learning, where machines mimic the human brain in trying to find solutions by processing data without requiring human supervision, the field is evolving exponentially, which is why we now have self driving cars hitting the roads in many countries as just one example of the practical applications of artificial intelligence. Both public research institutes such as universities as well as private companies such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) are involved in research, with Microsoft alone having around 8,000 artificial intelligence researchers, who can earn up to 300,000 euros a year for their work.
Artificial intelligence has been absolutely instrumental in battling the Covid-19 pandemic as well, the worst pandemic to strike the world in more than a century. The Covid-19 pandemic meant people couldn’t be too close together or come into contact at all since there was a major risk of spreading the deadly disease which has caused more than 1.6 million deaths so far. Organizations have been formed to use artificial intelligence to try and battle the virus, even as governments made thousands of papers easily accessible for researchers. Many artificial intelligence companies are providing their software or access to their platforms for free to enable researchers to congregate and come up with innovative solutions to preventing the spread of the disease, and this also includes predicting the spread of the disease. But the biggest contribution is in patient care, where one company made a remote monitoring system which had a biosensor for a patient’s arm and an AI application was used to enable the diagnosis. Meanwhile, another company used artificial intelligence to manage overloaded hospitals, which has become a major issue now that we have more than 600,000 cases daily across the world.
To determine the largest AI companies in the world was no easy task, as that information isn’t readily available. This is due to the fact that many of these companies are small and hence not listed on stock exchanges, and since private companies don’t have to divulge financial information, it can be hard to find out the exact size of a company. What we did was, we took a list of the 100 top companies in the world in the AI industry, and checked the revenues of those companies and ensured we were able to come up with the most accurate rankings. So let’s take a look at the leaders of the future, starting with number 15:
15. Pymetrics
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 18
Pymetrics has an interesting concept where companies fill an assessment by Pymetrics and based on this, AI creates the profile of an ideal candidate who will also fit in well with the existing employees of the company.
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