Global corporate R&D investment rankings, Intel ranks only eighth

According to Korean media businesskorea, the European Commission announced the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard on December 15. The main goal of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (scoreboard) is to compare the performance of the EU's innovation-driven industries with its major global peers. Compare and provide an R&D investment database that companies, investors and policymakers can use to compare the performance of individual companies against the best global competitors in their industries.

The 2022 edition of the scoreboard analyzes the 2,500 companies with the largest R&D investments in the world in 2021. These companies are headquartered in 41 countries, have more than 900,000 subsidiaries worldwide, and each company invested more than 48.5 million euros in R&D in 2021. The total investment by all 2,500 companies is 1,093.9 billion euros - equivalent to 86% of global corporate-funded R&D, breaking the trillion euro mark for the first time.

The figure below shows the top 50 R&D investment rankings, including Alphabet (Google) 27.8668 billion euros, Meta 21.7685 billion euros, Microsoft 21.6422 billion euros, Huawei 19.5338 billion euros and Apple 19.3484 billion euros. Samsung Electronics was rated as the sixth largest company in global R&D investment. The company invested 16.8128 billion euros in R&D, an increase of 6.5% over the previous year. It is the only Korean company to enter the top 50. Intel ranked eighth.

By country, 40.2% (822) of companies are headquartered in the United States, followed by Chinese companies at 17.9% (678), EU companies at 17.6% (361), and Japanese companies at 10.4% (233) .

53 companies from South Korea are on the list of the top 2500 global R&D companies. In addition to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix (3.0869 billion euros, 57th place), LG Electronics (2.6769 billion euros, 65th place) and Hyundai Motor (2.3051 billion euros, 79th place) entered the top 100.

In 2021, EU companies recovered after the COVID crisis in 2020, growing by 8.9%, compared with a pandemic-related decline of -2.2% in 2020. Total investments in R&D amounted to €192.8 billion, but their share of the global pie fell to 17.6%.

This is due to growth in investment in China. China surpassed the European Union in its share of global R&D investment in 2021. As the technological competition intensifies, Chinese companies' R&D investment has increased significantly in 2021, reaching 195.9 billion euros, accounting for 17.9% of the total global R&D expenditure.

European companies have a balanced portfolio, but the automotive sector accounted for a third of private R&D investment in 2021, the scoreboard showed.

In China, information and communications technology (ICT) companies lead the way, accounting for 44.4% of R&D spending.

The United States remains far ahead, with €439.7 billion, accounting for 40% of global private sector R&D. In the United States, companies investing the most in R&D are in the ICT and health sectors.