TL;DR
- A new IDC Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Spending Guide forecast shows that global spending on AI will reach $300 billion in 2026.
- Media is the fastest growing industry in AI adoption but not the biggest, which is identified as banking and retail.
- More than half of the total spend this year on AI will be in the United States.
READ MORE: Worldwide Spending on AI-Centric Systems Forecast to Reach $154 Billion in 2023, According to IDC (IDC)
Worldwide spending on AI, including software, hardware, and services for AI-centric systems, will reach $154 billion in 2023, according to research from consultancy IDC. The fastest growth in AI spending will come from the media industry.
What IDC describes as the ongoing incorporation of AI into a wide range of products will result in a compound annual growth rate of 27% over the 2022-2026 forecast with spending on AI-centric systems expected to surpass $300 billion in 2026.
“Companies that are slow to adopt AI will be left behind — large and small,” Mike Glennon, senior market research analyst with IDC says. “AI is best used to augment human abilities, automate repetitive tasks, provide personalized recommendations, and make data-driven decisions with speed and accuracy.”
The two industries that will deliver the largest AI investments between now and 2026 are banking and retail followed by professional services, but with a five-year CAGR of 30.2% it is the media industry that is exhibiting fastest growth.
The US will be the largest market for AI-centric systems, accounting for more than half of all spending worldwide in the sector throughout the forecast. Western Europe and China will spend 20% each.
Three of the leading AI use cases in terms of spending focus on sales and customer service functions: Augmented Customer Service Agents, Sales Process Recommendation and Augmentation, and Program Advisors and Recommendation Systems.
Per the report, these three use cases will see investment from nearly every industry and combined will account for more than a quarter of all AI spend this year.
Other principal use cases include IT optimization, augmented threat intelligence, and fraud analysis.
