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September 30, 2021

Artificial Intelligence funding expected to increase through 2022, reveals Gartner

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Artificial Intelligence funding is expected to increase through 2022, revealed Gartner. According to a new Gartner, Inc. survey, one-third of technology and service provider businesses with AI technology ambitions intend to invest $1 million or more in these technologies over the next two years. The great majority of survey respondents (87 percent) who see AI as a significant investment area predict that industrywide funding for AI would rise at a moderate to rapid pace through 2022.

“Rapidly evolving, diverse AI technologies will impact every industry,” said Errol Rasit, managing vice president at Gartner.

He added, “Technology organizations are increasing investments in AI as they recognize its potential to not only assess critical data and improve business efficiency, but also to create new products and services, expand their customer base and generate new revenue. These are serious investments that will help to dispel AI hype.”

AI technologies had the second-highest reported mean funding allocation when compared to other developing technology categories such as cloud and IoT. Respondents whose companies invested in AI said they planned to invest an average of $679,000 in computer vision over the next two years (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Level of Funding Allocated to AI Emerging Technologies

Source: Gartner (September 2021)

“Very few respondents reported funding amounts of less than $250,000 for AI technologies, indicating that AI development is cost-intensive compared to other technology innovations. This is not an easy segment to enter due to the complexity of building and training AI models,” said Rasit.

Barriers to AI Adoption and Integration Remain

The report also highlighted AI’s relative immaturity in comparison to other areas of research. Just over half of respondents say their AI-enabled goods and services have a high rate of target customer adoption. According to 41% of respondents, AI emerging technologies are still in the development or early adoption stages, implying that there will be a wave of possible adoption as new or enhanced AI goods and services become widely available.

Technology immaturity is recognised as a major factor for failure when integrating an emerging technology by AI-investing firms. Additionally, product executives investing in AI whose implementations are taking longer than expected cited product complexity and a lack of skills as the primary roadblocks to their success.

“These survey responses reflect the difficult cycle of developing AI technology, given its complexity, as well as industrywide challenges in hiring AI talent due to the finite number of skilled individuals,” said Rasit.