AI products projected to make $300 billion in 2026.
The International Data Corporation (IDC), a provider of global market intelligence, is estimating that the world’s spending on AI software, hardware, services and tools will grow from $118 billion in 2022 to over $300 billion in 2026. The organization notes that the “ongoing incorporation of AI into a wide range of products” is a major drive to this compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.5 percent over those years.
“AI is not the future, it is now,” said Mike Glennon, senior market research analyst with IDC’s Customer Insights & Analysis team. “Most IT vendors have adopted AI solutions to supplement their products and are enhancing their products to make AI crucial to their success. Those vendors that are only now considering AI are at a considerable disadvantage to IT vendors that have AI-based products already in production, and AI is becoming crucial to the capabilities of many products.”
Don’t let Glennon’s mention of IT vendors fool you. The research notes that the discrete and process manufacturing industry, for example, will be the fourth largest AI investor—meaning engineers at the production and product design stages will certainly be affected.
“The use of AI in business is moving away from simple cost saving to being a strong component of business growth, showing the increasing maturity of AI as an IT solution across a wide range of systems,” Glennon says.
Why Engineers Should Pay Attention
Though it is true that banking and retail applications such as customer service bots will be the biggest slice, IDC identified 30 AI use cases with 25 of them accounting for 60.7 percent of the pie. This means that there are a lot of new AI products hitting the market and many will be designed, made or perfected by engineers.
Many engineers are not versed in this technology, but they need to learn fast or risk disruption. To help alleviate this challenge, many providers are releasing simplified AI production software tools. Two recent news stories mentioned such tools from Altair, and NVIDIA and Dell Technologies:
