Corporate Participation in AI Research by Topic
This chart compares company participation across the twelve largest current OpenAlex AI research topics in two five-year periods. Mixed company-academic papers count, the denominator includes articles with a mapped institution, and changes may reflect both research activity and revisions to OpenAlex’s topic and affiliation records.
What does it show?
Corporate participation varies sharply by AI topic rather than rising uniformly across the field.
Methodology
Filters OpenAlex works to type = article and primary_topic.subfield.id = 1702 (Artificial Intelligence), then compares 2016–2020 with 2021–2025. The 12 topics are selected automatically by article count among current-period AI articles with at least one mapped country; the same set is used in both charts. For each topic and period, the numerator counts an article once if any authorship has an institution that OpenAlex classifies as a company; mixed company-academic papers count. The denominator is articles with at least one mapped institution. Affiliations describe institutions listed on papers, not complete employment histories, and OpenAlex classifications can be revised.