Retail and banking to lead AI spend

Written by NTN staff

12/03/19

Artificial Intelligence is an all consuming category of technologies that is set to grow by 44% to $35.8 billion in 2019 and will double to $79.2 billion in 2022.

"Significant worldwide artificial intelligence systems spend can now be seen within every industry as AI initiatives continue to optimises operations, transform the customer experience, and create new products and services", said Marianne Daquila, research manager, Customer Insights & Analysis at IDC. "This is evidenced by use cases, such as intelligent process automation, expert shopping advisors & product recommendations, and pharmaceutical research and discovery exceeding the average five-year compound annual growth of 38%. The continued advancement of AI-related technologies will drive double-digit year-over-year spend into the next decade."

IDC has broken down spending on Artificial Intelligence by sector, led by the retail industry, and followed by banking.

The biggest spending sector will be retail industry, where the technology will be set to work at a cost of $5.9 billion, on solutions such as automated customer service agents and expert shopping advisors & product recommendations, according to IDC.

Banking will be the second largest industry, with $5.6 billion going toward AI-enabled solutions, including automated threat intelligence & prevention systems and fraud analysis & investigation systems.

These will be followed by discrete manufacturing, healthcare providers, and process manufacturing.

IDC says software will be the largest area of AI systems spending in 2019 with nearly $13.5 billion going toward AI applications and AI software platforms. AI applications will be the fastest growing category of AI spending with a five-year CAGR of 47.3%.

Hardware spending, dominated by servers, will be $12.7 billion this year as companies continue to build out the infrastructure necessary to support AI systems. By the end of the forecast, AI-related services spending will nearly equal hardware spending.