Nearly 70% of S&P 500 companies showed documented external AI activity between 2023 and 2025, according to a CB Insights analysis of the largest US public companies. The research firm counted 349 index members with AI partnerships, investments or acquisitions over the period, while 151 companies, or 30.2%, had no documented external AI activity.

Participation is broad but shallow for most firms. The median active company had only three to four documented AI partner relationships. At the top, five companies, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Salesforce, accounted for 32% of all documented S&P 500 AI activity across business relationships, investments and acquisitions.

Partnerships with AI startups grew from 835 in 2023 to 1,005 in 2024 and 1,031 in 2025, a 23% increase over two years. Most of those ties remain early stage. CB Insights classified nearly 68% of the relationships as ecosystem building, such as integrations, pilot programs and co-marketing, while 11.8% were client relationships and 11.9% were vendor relationships.

External deal data does not capture all corporate AI work. Among more than 300 earnings call transcripts reviewed, 68% of companies with no documented AI partnerships still discussed AI strategy on their calls. Hiring also points to internal buildouts: in 2025, Abbott posted 2,653 AI-related roles, Accenture posted 1,442 and ADP posted 1,048.

The analysis also tracked where enterprise money is going. Infrastructure and model-layer companies accounted for more than half of enterprise investment rounds, and acquisitions made up 3.2% of enterprise AI capital flows. Six of the top 10 emerging AI markets with S&P 500 activity were agent-related, including a category CB Insights calls Know Your Agent, which covers agent identity, permissions and monitoring.

Source: CB Insights -- https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/the-future-of-the-enterprise-ai-buildout/