IoT Analytics CEO Knud Lasse Lueth highlighted strong C-level support for deploying AI in industrial settings as the company forecast spending would expand at a CAGR of 23 per cent by 2030.

Lueth said spending on industrial AI currently remains at less than 10 per cent of many companies R&D and IT budgets, but is optimistic about the potential because current outlay is typically incorporated into CEO-level strategies.

“The focus has shifted to modernising data architectures and scaling proven use cases”, Lueth said, pointing to quality inspection as an example.

“Following the wave of industrial copilots launched in 2024 and 2025, edge and agentic AI are now emerging as the next areas of attention”.

IoT Analytics stated spending on industrial AI stood at $43.6 billion in 2024 and expects the figure to hit $153.9 billion by 2030.

The research outfit’s latest figures are based on companies increasingly employing the technology in areas including industrial data management, staff training and trials of agentic AI, along with the fields identified by Lueth.

Senior analyst Fernando Brugge said AI is “becoming a central part of manufacturers strategies”, a notable change from the situation in 2021 when “many companies struggled to identify a business case or derive real value” from initial deployments of the technology.

Brugge noted the picture today is “very different” because infrastructure has been deployed and AI is beginning to show clear benefits, in turn spurring companies to develop strategies to employ it.