One-third tech providers plan investments worth $1 mn or more in AI by 2023

About one-third (33%) of technology and service provider organizations with artificial intelligence (AI) technology aim to invest $1 million or more into these technologies in the next two years, as per a Gartner survey.

The research and advisory firm’s survey also found that 87% of the respondents, with AI technologies as a major investment area, believe that industrywide funding for AI will increase at a moderate to fast pace through 2022.

In comparison to other emerging technology areas such as Cloud and Internet of Things, AI technologies had the second-highest reported mean funding allocation, as per the survey.

“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,” Errol Rasit, managing vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.  

Respondents whose organizations invested in AI reported their highest planned investment in computer vision, at an average of $679,000 over two years.

“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,” Rasit added.

Additionally, just over half of the respondents reported significant target customer adoption of their AI-enabled products and services, Gartner said.

41% of respondents cited AI emerging technologies as still being in development or early adoption stages, Gartner said, adding that there is a wave of potential adoption as new or augmented AI products and services enter general availability.

Gartner added that product leaders investing in AI whose implementations are progressing slower than expected reported product complexity and a lack of skills as the main hindrances to their progress.

The survey, titled the 2021 Gartner Second Annual Emerging Technology Product Leaders Survey, was conducted online from April through June 2021 among 268 respondents from China, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Britain, and the United States.

Gartner said respondents were required to be involved in their organizations’ portfolio decisions when it comes to emerging technology, working at an organization in the high-tech industry with enterprise-wide revenue for fiscal year 2020 of $10 million or more.