The EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard monitors and benchmarks the performance of the EU’s leading industrial R&D investors against their global peers. Since 2004, the Scoreboard has been a reliable source of key insights and data for companies, researchers, and policy-makers.
In 2023, the world’s top 2 000 R&D investors, headquartered across 40 countries and representing over 900,000 subsidiaries, collectively invested EUR 1 257 billion in R&D. This accounted for over 85% of global business-funded R&D. The top 50 companies alone contributed 40% of the total, indicating that a small number of companies control a significant portion of global business sector R&D investment.
The top 2 000 includes 322 EU-based companies (18.7% of the total R&D investment), alongside 681 US firms (42.3%), 524 Chinese firms (17.1%), 185 Japanese firms (8.3%), and 288 companies from the rest of the world (13.5%), including the UK (63), Taiwan (55), South Korea (40), and Switzerland (39).
Global R&D investment grew by 7.8% nominally (4.5% adjusted for inflation) in 2023, marking a slowdown compared to 2022 and 2021. EU firms led this growth, increasing R&D investments by 9.8% nominally, outpacing US companies (5.9%) for the second consecutive year and narrowing the R&D gap with the US. Moreover, for the first time in the Scoreboard’s history, the EU’s nominal R&D growth also surpassed that of China (9.6%). However, when adjusted for inflation, Chinese companies still lead real R&D investment growth (10.2%). Despite this increase, 2023 marked the 6th consecutive year of declining real R&D investment growth rates in China.
https://iri.jrc.ec.europa.eu/scoreboard/2024-eu-industrial-rd-investment-scoreboard