The Bank for International Settlements published a working paper and accompanying cross-country dataset mapping the global distribution of AI production. The study identifies 1,246 AI-producing firms across 32 economies and classifies them into five AI supply chain layers, providing evidence on concentration, specialisation and investment patterns relevant to jurisdictions considering AI industrial and sovereign AI strategies. Firm activity is heavily concentrated in the United States (nearly 700 firms) and China (around 250), with the Euro area (59), Israel (42), the United Kingdom (40) and Japan (26) forming the next tier by firm count. The paper reports that most economies specialise in only a few supply chain layers and many focus largely on compute, while venture capital inflows are strongly correlated with the presence and density of AI firms. On economic footprint, AI firms’ combined valuation exceeded 200% of GDP in Chinese Taipei in 2025, while AI firms accounted for 40% of total market capitalisation in the United States and 39% in Korea in 2025; in 2024 they represented around 13% of total revenue in both the United States and Korea and 23% and 26% of capital expenditure, respectively. Investment activity shows home bias, with United States and China AI firms making 64% and 74% of investment deals domestically, and at least 44% of deals in all economies targeting AI applications. The BIS makes the underlying country-level dataset publicly available alongside the paper, which is built using PitchBook-sourced firm data with large language model-assisted classification and manual verification, and is restricted to firms with valuations above USD 500 million.
Bank for International Settlements 2026-04-20
Bank for International Settlements publishes dataset on 1,246 AI-producing firms and finds the United States and China are the largest hubs
The Bank for International Settlements published a working paper and cross-country dataset mapping 1,246 AI-producing firms across 32 economies into five AI supply chain layers, highlighting global concentration, specialisation and investment patterns relevant to AI industrial and sovereign strategies. Firm activity is heavily concentrated in the United States and China, with significant economic footprint in Chinese Taipei and Korea, and shows strong home bias in investment and a high share of deals targeting AI applications. The publicly available dataset is based on PitchBook data, uses large language model-assisted classification with manual verification, and covers firms with valuations above USD 500 million.