The 100 Leaders of AI in Business

February 9, 2017

5 Min Read

The artificial intelligence for business field is growing at unprecedented rates year on year. In 2016 the AI for business market value was predicted to be $8bn by 2020; it is now forecast by multiple sources at approximately $47bn by 2020.

Since 2014, AI Business have been pioneers in this space, staying ahead of the curve by carrying out extensive research into the key industries that AI technologies are transforming, and uncovering the most innovative solution providers in each industry area. Just as the AI for business market has evolved, so too has our scope for research. Our world-leading AI Summit event series began in London in May 2016, and this year brings together thousands of C-level executives and AI innovators in London, San Francisco, New York, Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Our 2017 Ecosystem is our most comprehensive yet. By diving deeper into more industries than ever before, we have been able to discover the full spectrum of global solution providers – from giants such as Microsoft, IBM Watson and Google through to the most exciting start-ups in the space.

The industries we have chosen are those which have been most receptive to the evolution of AI. Major enterprises within these industries are investing heavily in the technologies under the AI umbrella – machine/deep learning, NLP & voice recognition, image recognition and cognitive computing. Many are already beyond the experimentation stage, with a full implementation plan in place – and seeing tangible ROI as a result.

The financial services sector is a forerunner in AI implementation, with AI enabling greater efficiency parameters, improved customer service platforms, drastically reduced costs and enhanced risk management. Top tier global innovators such as HCL, IBM, Microsoft are integrating their solutions with entire IT systems, while growing companies such as Digital Reasoning are making their own way in the market by applying AI to ensure compliance and maintain security.

In healthcare, IBM Watson are a leader provider, improving diagnostics and personal patient care. But emerging companies like Hindsait and AiCure are also making headway, targeting particular corners of the market with their distinct innovations.

Google has made well-documented progress in the automotive sector with their self-driving car, but fresh start-ups continue to make strides in this field. UK-based Five.AI emerged last year with $2.7m in funding and a goal to build AI-driven software to help accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles from inside the vehicles themselves.

Legal is another industry that has seen a huge uptake of AI, with many major global firms implementing the technology to speed up contract analysis, carry out research and perform predictive analytics. Silicon Valley start-up ROSS Intelligence is working with several high-profile firms in the US such as BakerHostetler, while in the UK Neota Logic recently signed a deal with Clifford Chance.

Manufacturing has always been a sector ripe for automation, and recently advancements by household names such as Bosch and Western Digital continue that trend on an increasingly intricate cognitive level.

In media, and particularly in ad tech and marketing, AI is enabling organisations to outmaneuver competitors in a number of ways. AI can perform complex text analytics, create highly personalised content user experiences and in some cases even write content itself. IPONWEB are an established provider in the media field, applying AI in the form of machine learning to real-time trading and decision-making in digital advertising, while Narrative Science are advancing natural language generation with their Quill platform. Huge players such as Facebook and Microsoft have made investments in the ad tech and marketing space with product recommendations and content generation that has seamlessly entered our everyday lives. Google continues its market-dominating position in this field with further investment in AI bringing more efficiencies.

AI’s impact in advertising and marketing has in many ways translated to the retail industry, particularly online, where retailers from Amazon to John Lewis are able to analyse consumer behaviour and create personalised experiences and recommendations as a result. In retail AI goes beyond this, too – Parlamind, for instance, increases productivity among customer service staff by learning the best responses to customer queries, while Prism Skylab moves into the physical retail world by combining real-world video, machine intelligence, and data visualization in the cloud to transform store cameras into powerful, insightful tools.

In the search and advisory sectors like professional services, Big Four consultancies such as PwC, KPMG and Deloitte have taken big steps forward to make AI part of their core company infrastructure, while such giants as Publicis.Sapient are creating platforms where digital is “at the core” rather than an “extension” or “bolt-on”.

There are numerous industry-agnostic conversational assistants finding successful application across all verticals. x.ai introduced their AI assistant ‘Amy’ into the enterprise last year, with a single mission of scheduling meetings automatically by syncing with mail calendars. Artificial Solutions won the AIconics Award for Best Intelligent Assistant Innovation last year for Teneo, while Humley powered theaisummit.com by implementing their intelligent chatbot into the website.

At the core we find many major tech corporates committing to an AI-enabled future – NVIDIA pioneering the deep learning charge, HP revolutionising enterprise software tools and companies like Volume Global emerging to create a paradigm shift in the way contact centre calls are handled.

AI Business is constantly researching the latest solution providers’ activities as well as those of end-users; by getting both the solution provider and end-user perspective, we are able to get a 360-degree view of the practical impact the technology is having in the enterprise.

Our ecosystem infographic brings together everyone from start-ups through to the giants in the space. To view the whole ecosystem, use this link: https://theaisummit.com/london/eco-system-2017/

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