(Yicai) April 3 -- China homes almost 16 percent of the world's 37,664 artificial intelligence companies, ranking second only behind the United States, according to a new report.

The number of Chinese AI firms topped 6,003 as of last September, while their US peers reached 13,725, a report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed. The United Kingdom, India, and Canada rounded up the top five.

In addition, the number of AI unicorns reached 286 worldwide, with 60 focusing on business intelligence, 55 on large language models, and the rest mostly on healthcare, fintech, AI chips, and autonomous driving.

Regarding the global AI market, the US led with an 18.5 percent share, followed by China at 10.6 percent, the UK at 6 percent, Germany at 5.4 percent, and Japan at 4.1 percent.

The AI market will likely top USD1 trillion by 2029 or 2030, according to Statista. The AI robotics and natural language processing segments will grow the fastest, with compound annual growth rates of over 40 percent.

Global AI funding reached USD98.3 billion in the nine months ended Sept. 30, with the healthcare, finance, and transportation sectors most attractive to investors. The LLM funding share surged to 43 percent last year from 7 percent in 2022, while also more than doubling to USD42.3 billion in the first three quarters.

Infrastructure construction is also accelerating, with the number of data centers worldwide likely reaching 421,000 last year, while the expected average CAGR stands at 4.6 percent through 2029, which will bring the figure to 448,000, the report said, citing data from Gartner. In addition, data centers with over 500 servers likely exceeded 2,000, with an expected CAGR of 8.1 percent from 2024 to 2029.

The weakening global economic growth momentum has led to softening overall demand, which has transferred to the digital sector, significantly altering market expectations, capital allocation, corporate behaviors, and public policy priorities. The shift has driven the AI industry's developmental focus from scale to efficiency and sustainability.

Editor: Martin Kadiev