2025 Global R&D Investments: Year-End Evaluation and 2026 Projections

Executive Summary

As we leave 2025 behind, we analyze the financial performance and AI-focused innovation strategies of the world's top 20 R&D investors, from Amazon to Nvidia, Huawei to Merck.

Leaving 2025 Behind: New Map of Innovation

As Hitit Media Strategy Team, we deeply analyzed Research and Development (R&D) investments, one of the most critical competition indicators of the global economy, while closing the year 2025. Entering 2026, the data we have clearly reveals that artificial intelligence has ceased to be a 'sector' and has become the main engine of all business processes.

According to European Commission's 2025 Industrial R&D Scoreboard data:

• Total R&D investment of the world's top 2,000 companies exceeded 1.446 trillion Euros in the 2024 fiscal year
• This figure represents more than 90% of global R&D funded by the private sector
• AI investments reached 35% of total R&D budgets

Overwhelming Dominance of US Big Tech Companies

As of 2025, all of the top five companies on the R&D list are US-based software and hardware giants. The US alone accounts for 47.1% of the total spending of the world's largest investor firms.

Striking: The R&D weight of US-based 'Big Tech' firms has doubled in the last decade, reaching 15% of total global private sector investments.

Amazon: From Retail to AI Giant

Amazon is the undisputed leader of 2025 with a colossal budget between 85-88 billion dollars. These expenditures, reported under the 'Technology and Content' item, are especially allocated to the development of generative AI (GenAI) models via AWS.

• AWS Bedrock: Enterprise AI model development platform
• Alexa Plus: Consumer products integrating AI into daily life
• Just Walk Out: AI-supported retail technology

Alphabet and Meta: Converting Ad Revenues to AI

Alphabet, spending 48-50 billion dollars with Google DeepMind research and cloud services, maintains balance with a 14.6% R&D intensity. Meta is one of the 'most innovation-hungry' giants with a 19.1% rate.

Strategic focuses led by Mark Zuckerberg:

• Llama: Open source large language model family
• Reality Labs: Metaverse and XR investments
• AI Studio: AI tools for businesses

Nvidia: Symbol of AI Explosion

Nvidia made history by increasing its market value over 4.5 trillion dollars in 2025. R&D spending increased by 43% reaching 16.7 billion dollars.

Nvidia's 2025 Roadmap:

• Blackwell: Next-gen AI data center GPUs
• Rubin: High-end architecture planned for 2026
• CUDA: Software ecosystem dominance with 4 million developers

Asia's Struggle for Technological Independence

Huawei: Resistance Despite Sanctions

Spending three times the sector average with a 22.7% R&D intensity despite US sanctions, Huawei invests in technological self-sufficiency with a budget of 26-28 billion dollars.

• Kirin processors: Domestic production with SMIC
• HarmonyOS: Active on more than 1 billion devices
• 5.5G/6G: Leadership target in telecom infrastructure

Samsung: Leadership in Memory Technologies

With a budget of 25-26 billion dollars, Samsung focuses on HBM3E and HBM4 memory technologies, which are critical especially for AI accelerators. While competing in the foundry business with TSMC, it also tries to maintain its leadership in smartphone panel technologies.

Biopharma: Patent Cliff and New Discoveries

The healthcare sector continues to be the field with the highest R&D intensity after ICT. Merck & Co. is the leader of the pharmaceutical world with its 17.9 billion dollar spending.

Patent Cliff Risk: Against the patent protection of Keytruda ending in 2028, Merck is conducting more than 80 Phase III studies.

Europe's biopharma giants also perform strongly:

• AstraZeneca: 13.6 billion dollars with a 24.2% increase
• AbbVie: Massive R&D intensity of 66.7%
• Roche & Novartis: Personalized medicine and oncology investments

Automotive: Electrification Pains

Volkswagen is the absolute leader of the automotive world with a budget of 20-21 billion dollars. However, disruptions in the software unit CARIAD and stagnation in the European market lead to efficiency questions.

With a more 'hybrid' strategy of 11 billion dollars, Toyota:

• Battery electric vehicles (BEV)
• Hydrogen fuel cells
• Software defined vehicle (SDV) platforms

Outlook to 2026: Era of Agile Giants

The data we have confirms that the global economy is in a process of 'innovation-based divergence'.

Predictions for 2026 and Beyond

We expect the following areas to take more place in R&D budgets in the coming period:

• 6G Telecommunications: Infrastructure investments targeted for 2030
• Quantum Computing: Race led by Google and IBM
• Personalized Gene Therapies: Future of biotechnology
• Sustainable Energy: Green hydrogen and battery technologies

Not only the companies spending the most money, but the 'agile giants' capable of converting these investments into social and economic value fastest will be the new owners of the global economy.

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