Ritu Jyoti, group vice president, Worldwide Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation Research at IDC, said, "AI has emerged as the next major wave of innovation. AI solutions are currently focused on business process problems and range from human augmentation to process improvement to planning and forecasting, empowering superior decisioning and outcomes. "Advancements in language, voice and vision technologies, and multi-modal AI solutions are revolutionizing human efficiencies. Overall, AI plus human ingenuity is the differentiator for enterprises to scale and thrive in the era of compressed digital transformation," Jyoti said. Among the three technology categories, AI Software will see its share of spending decline slightly in 2022 as spending for AI Hardware and Services grows more quickly. This trend will continue into 2023. Overall, AI Services is forecast to deliver the fastest spending growth over the next five years with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% while the CAGR for AI Hardware will be 20.5%. In the AI Software category, AI Applications accounted for 47% of spending in the first half of 2021, followed by AI System Infrastructure Software with around 35% share. In terms of growth, AI Platforms are expected to perform the best with a five-year CAGR of 34.6%. The slowest growing segment will be AI System Infrastructure Software with a five-year CAGR of 14.1%. Within the AI Applications segment AI ERM is forecast to grow the fastest over the next several years relative to AI CRM and the rest of AI Applications. Among all the named software markets published in the Tracker, AI Lifecycle Software is forecast to see the fastest growth with a five-year CAGR of 38.9%. In the AI Services category, AI IT Services enjoyed 20.4% year-over-year growth in the first half of 2021 with worldwide spending reaching $18.4 billion. This growth is forecast to improve to 22% in 2022 and remain there through the end of the forecast period. AI Business Services are not far behind in terms of growth with a five-year CAGR of 21.9%. By 2025, IDC expects overall AI Services spending to reach $52.6 billion. Jennifer Hamel, research manager, Analytics and Intelligent Automation Services, said, "AI remains a key driver of IT investment, which in turn boosts spending on related services to ensure sustainable adoption at scale.

Worldwide revenues for the artificial intelligence (AI) market, including software, hardware, and services, are forecast to grow 16.4% year over year in 2021 to $327.5 billion, according to the latest release of the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Artificial Intelligence Tracker. By 2024, the market is expected to break the $500 billion mark with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5% and total revenues reaching $554.3 billion. Among the three technology categories, software represented 88% of the total AI market revenues in 2020. However, it is the slowest growing category with a five-year CAGR of 17.3%. Within the AI software category, AI Applications took the largest share of revenue at 50% in 2020.