CONTRIBUTOR
While the generative AI market had a financially rough 2022, that changed quickly after OpenAI publicly released its AI-driven ChatGPT chatbot. According to market research firm Market.US, the global generative AI market reached nearly $11 billion in 2022, a market that’s expected to grow just north of 31% through 2032 and reach $152 billion by that year.
Yet, according to market research firm CB Insights, when looking at the AI venture-funded startup market, 2022 wasn’t quite the growth party. CB Insights, in its report CB Insights Artificial Intelligence Report 2022, shared that global AI funding fell 34% in 2022, year over year, to nearly $45 billion. “This activity aligned with the broader venture funding downturn in 2022,” the report states.
CB Insights also found that the total number of AI unicorns increased in 2022, up by a count of 34 to reach 166. According to the research firm, AI M&A deals also fell 17% last year. “AI exits fell across the board in 2022, with the number of M&A deals, IPOs, and SPACs all tumbling. M&A exits held up best, only falling by 17% YoY to 259 deals. IPOs nosedived by 57% to 19. SPACs [special purpose acquisition companies] plunged by 50% to 8,” the firm reports.
Research firm IDC found last year to be quite robust when looking at the broader AI market, including all software, hardware and services directly within AI and supporting AI deployments. According to IDC, worldwide revenues for the AI market, including software, hardware and services for both AI-centric and AI non-centric applications, totaled $383.3 billion in 2021, an increase of 20.7% over the prior year. IDC projects the AI market will have reached nearly $450 billion by the end of 2022, and will continue growing in the high teen percentages in the near term.
New research from Accenture finds that generative AI and other rapidly evolving technologies are ushering in a bold new future for business as physical and digital worlds become inextricably linked.
In its newly released report, When Atoms Meet Bits: The Foundations of Our New Reality, consultancy Accenture predicts generative AI will substantially converge the physical and digital worlds. “While generative AI will have far-reaching impact, leaders must dive in now to achieve its full promise, as it will require significant investments in data, people, and customizing foundation models to meet organizations’ unique needs,” Paul Daugherty, group chief executive of Accenture Technology said in a statement.
A full 95% of executives surveyed for the Accenture report believe generative AI will bring a new era of enterprise intelligence, while 98% believe the technology will be the catalyst of significant creativity and innovation. “Companies will use these models to reinvent the way work is done. Every role in every enterprise has the potential to be reinvented as humans working with AI co-pilots become the norm, dramatically amplifying what people can achieve. Generative AI will impact tasks, not occupations. Some of those tasks will be automated, some will be transformed through AI assistance, and some will be unaffected,” Accenture wrote in its announcement.
Large enterprise software providers have certainly taken notice. Just last month, Salesforce announced it will invest $250 million in startups focused on generative AI.
So, while there was a brief decline in global generative AI funding in 2022, reports indicate that the broader AI market is still growing robustly and will continue to grow. And despite any brief downturn in generative AI funding, the future of generative AI and its enterprise impact remains quite bright.
