Investor funding in artificial intelligence (AI) startups has increased 10 fold over the last 5 years, latest study by Zinnov revealed.
The consulting firm pointed out that AI today is disrupting some of the oldest and disruption-immune verticals like automotive, manufacturing and finance.
AI investments swelled significantly from $94 million in 2011 to $1049 million in 2016.
Geographically, U.S currently dominates the global AI Startup landscape. Globally, there are 2277 AI start ups with a market size of over $14.28 billion.
Europe’s AI Startup ecosystem is also emerging and growing rapidly with a total of 441 startups currently and an overall investment of $1B billion across UK, France and Germany.
Top verticals interested in AI include fintech, healthcare and retail.
Further, the study found that global organizations are also well leveraging the European startup ecosystem.
It also stated that there are three kinds of companies that are investing into AItoday – Startups, Top 500 global R&D spenders’ and world’s five largest software companies.
Artificial Intelligence is set to offer a sea of opportunities for market players over the coming years.
Industries will increasingly rely on automated, intelligent applications to run most processes, supplemented with human intelligence and direction periodically.
IBM Watson grabbed significant attention from the market since its launch. Enterprises such as the North Face, SoftBank Robotics, UA Record, Whirlpool home appliances, Pathway Genomics have used the Watson capabilities.
IBM recently said demand for IoT and AI technologies are escalating, especially from Europe. Based on that, the company announced a $200 million investment in its Watson Internet of Things business headquartered in Munich, Germany.
That is one of the company’s largest ever investment in Europe and it is part of the $3 billion global investment designed to bring Watson cognitive computing to IoT.
Apple reportedly acquired Seattle-based artificial intelligence and machine learning start-up Turi for about $200 million. With this move, Apple aims to increase its focus on AI, while its rivals such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are also in the race.
