This report delves into the current landscape of Australia's artificial intelligence (AI) companies and research institutes, revealing a nimble and growing AI ecosystem that's on par with some of the world's AI leaders.

To accelerate this growth, the report calls on Australia to more effectively turn AI research into commercial opportunities to support existing national industry strengths.

It identifies 31 potential application domains that can help Australia become a globally competitive AI maker and exporter, and the AI innovation locations that can help catalyse the formation, growth and development of these industry-specific AI opportunities.

Key findings

• There are 544 AI companies in Australia, a figure that is on par with other global AI leaders like Canada.
• The number of AI companies has increased substantially in the past decade, with 396 opening in the past 10 years and 204 in the past five years. This is a 7.7 per cent year-on-year growth over the past five years.
• Most of Australia’s AI companies provide data services that develop and optimise AI capabilities, including data analysis and management.
• Australia is among the global leaders in terms of AI job postings, with 1.2 per cent of all job postings in 2022 being AI-related. Demand for AI jobs has been growing faster in Australia relative to international comparisons, with the share of AI-related job postings increasing by more than 7 times between 2014 and 2022.
• Australia’s AI companies show patterns of geographic clustering with 8 hotspots across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. 54 per cent (296) of AI companies are located in these hotspots.