A while back we looked at the global robot market, and it turns out that China has long enjoyed a big lead and they are building on it. The estimates of this and two other important markets—machine vision and AI—are as fluid as they are optimistic. Let’s check in with some of the averaged market expectations so that we know what we’ll likely see in the next half-decade or so.
Let’s start with industrial robots. Market expectations are high. Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) estimates in the years 2024–2032 vary from about 10.5% to 14.2% (although some outliers are really outliers on the top end).
Moving on to machine vision, the expected CAGR for the same year span is between 7.8 and 13.3 (again, the estimates vary greatly). The market value estimate for 2032 is much lower than the industrial robot estimate. This makes a lot of sense since some of machine vision’s growth—a lot of it depending on how much you trust a given source—comes from its use on a robot. As in the industrial robot market, the Asia/Pacific will grow at a faster rate than the rest.
I want to treat AI in two different manners, one as a general market technology and one as a manufacturing technology. The general market for AI is almost ridiculously good: a CAGR of between 22.6% and 33.9%. In 2024 it was an industry worth $178.6 billion; in 2032 it is expected to grow to $2.5 trillion. If it were a world economy, the general AI market would be smaller than France but larger than Mexico.
And now here is some wonderful news for manufacturers: AI for manufacturing will grow at a CAGR in the range of 35.1% to 46.1%. In all my years of researching such things, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a CAGR estimate that high. In 2024, the value of the manufacturing AI market was $6.0 billion; it is expected to grow to $103.3 billion. As with other high-growth markets, it is expected that the Asia/Pacific region will have the highest growth in manufacturing AI.
There may be so many people saying, “Here, take my money,” when it comes to investing in AI, it might seem like the perfect formula for overvaluation, a modern-day tulip market. Let’s take a look at the top 10 countries and their level of private investment, specifically, in 2024 (figures are in $ billions):
United States | $109.1 |
China | $9.3 |
United Kingdom | $4.5 |
Sweden | $4.3 |
Canada | $2.9 |
France | $2.6 |
Germany | $2.0 |
United Arab Emirates | $1.8 |
Austria | $1.5 |
Israel | $1.4 |
The other side of the investment coin is whose governments are making investments in AI, eventually meaning whose citizens are paying for it. China is closing the gap with the U.S. in terms of AI performance benchmarks. Last year the country launched a $47.5 billion semiconductor fund to support the goal of having its own chip supply chain.
With its “France 2030” plan, the French government committed 109 million Euros to AI initiatives. Also last year, France attracted 41 AI-related foreign investment projects (the highest in Europe).
The other notable government investment was Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment in hopes of becoming a global AI hub. It is called “Project Transcendence.”
That’s most of the big money surrounding these technologies. Whereas I advised young people to become welders (and continue to do so, welding is still a fine profession with eager hirers, and a creative profession too), I guess I would lean toward the technologies of robots, machine vision and AI today. There’s nothing that says you can’t do both.