United States companies poured $344 billion into artificial intelligence in 2025, according to Stanford University's 2026 AI Index report, anchoring a record year for global AI investment. Worldwide corporate AI spending reached $581 billion for the year, more than double the $253 billion invested in 2024 and well past the previous record of $360 billion set in 2021, based on data compiled by AI analytics firm Quid and cited in the report.

The scale of US investment continues to separate American companies from the rest of the world in model development. Research group Epoch AI, whose data feeds into the Stanford index, tracked 50 notable AI models released by US based organizations in 2025, more than any other country, though the report notes China's output is beginning to narrow the gap.

Model development itself has shifted decisively toward industry. Models released by private companies now account for more than 90 percent of all notable AI models tracked by Epoch AI, up from just under half in 2015 and effectively zero in 2003, as academic and government labs have receded from frontier model development.

The investment boom is matched by grassroots activity among developers. The number of AI related projects on GitHub climbed to 5.58 million through 2025, a 23.7 percent increase from 2024 and roughly five times the count recorded in 2020, showing the AI buildout extends well beyond the largest funding rounds and into everyday software development.

Source: IEEE Spectrum (Stanford HAI AI Index 2026) - https://spectrum.ieee.org/state-of-ai-index-2026