Global spread of AI activity by application cluster

Hover over each dot to see the AI activity domain and the funding amount. When funding amounts were undisclosed, the amount was set to $1.

See the full list of domains Agritech, AI Monetization, AR/VR, AV, Beauty and Fashion, Business Operations, Chatbot, Computer Vision, Consulting, Creative Music Video Content, Cybersecurity Data Protection, Data Management Processing, Defense, Drones, Ed Tech, Energy Management, Energy Oil and Gas, Entertainment, Facial Recognition, Fintech, Fitness and Wellness, Fleet Management, Geospatial, Government Contracts, Hospitality and Travel, HR Tech, Image Generation, Industrial Automation, Insurtech, IoT, Legal Tech, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Marketing Digital Ads, Medical and Health care, NFTs Crypto Currency, NLP Customer Support, Quantum Computing, Real Estate, Research and Development, Retail, Risk Management, Robotics, Sales Enablement, Semantic Search, Supply Chain, Surveillance, VC, Code Generation Debugging, Infrastructure Research & Governance, Construction & Architecture, Content & Translation, Environmentalism, Chips, Voice

Source: Authors’ presentation based on Quid-enhanced Capital IQ + Crunchbase dataset (2014–2025).
Note: This global map plots AI companies and investments by their specialized domains. Each colored dot represents a distinct application cluster—ranging from NLP and medical AI to robotics and voice generation—geolocated by the headquarters of the firm. Each dot represents an AI company or investment, color-coded by cluster. The map reveals not only geographic diversity, but sectoral specialization—underscoring that the global AI race is plural, not singular. When funding amounts were undisclosed, the amount was set to $1 by default to represent the full range of geographic investment areas and clusters.
The Brookings Institution
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