From applications in clinical areas such as diagnostics and drug discovery, to the chemical, manufacturing, retail and automotive sectors, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have disrupted many traditional industries, opening new frontiers and driving the development of ground-breaking solutions.

The global AI market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 33% in the next decade, expanding from $47bn in 2021 to $360bn in 2028, according to a recent report published by Fortune Business Insights. An increasing number of corporate venturing units have been targeting AI businesses across the globe. In 2019, 100 corporate-backed deals were inked in the sector, worth an aggregate value of around $4bn, a 33% increase in volume and a 100% rise in value on 2018, according to GCV Analytics. With the spread of the pandemic, activity decreased in 2020 and the sector recorded 86 corporate-sponsored deals for a total value of around $2bn. However, 2021 has seen a strong rebound in activity and a huge amount of capital has been poured into the AI segment from corporate investors. In the first ten months of the year, 83 corporate-financed deals were inked, with an aggregate value that exceeded pre-pandemic levels and reached more than $5bn. Alphabet, Softbank and Bloomberg have been the three top investors in AI deals in the past two years. Geographically, North America recorded the majority of deals in 2021, with 31 rounds, followed by Japan with 16 and China with 13, according to GCV Analytics. Our data also shows that there has been a strong increase in later-stage rounds backed by corporates this year, with 22 series C rounds and beyond in the first ten months of 2021, compared with only eight in 2020 and six in 2019. Among the largest investments was a $676m series D round for software developer SambaNova Systems, which is backed by several technology corporations including Samsung, Intel and Alphabet. The round was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 in April 2021 and valued the company at $5.1bn. “SambaNova is developing a technology able to run advanced AI applications that is intended to be more powerful than existing central or graphics processing units,” said Patrick Bangert, vice-president of AI at Samsung SDS. “We believe in the great potential of the company’s technology, which can be deployed in a wide array of use cases, including digital health, by training systems based on high-resolution imagery and improving therapeutic and compound research.” Biomedical potential Another segment that has attracted hefty rounds of funding is AI as applied to drug development. Employing AI models enables a more accurate detection of patterns and trends across vast biomedical databases, reducing failure rates and speeding up the discovery process. One company working in this…

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