Other AI Firms Supplied 55.2% of Investment Into AI Companies

Other AI firms supplied 55.2% of the incoming investment value in AI companies from 2021 through 2025, while supplier-customer ties featured in deals representing nearly half of AI-to-AI investment value.

The 55.2% figure measures the share of incoming investment value sourced from other AI firms, not the total amount of funding in dollars. Over the same period, 28.7% of AI firms’ outgoing investment value went to other AI firms.

Commercial supply-chain relationships connected the investor and target in 16.1% of AI-to-AI deals by count. Those deals represented 46.4% of the total value of AI-to-AI investment.

When a supplier invests in a customer, the investment may help secure demand or access to critical inputs. The overlap can also make it harder to tell whether purchases reflect independent market demand or are supported by the supplier’s investment.

Circular investment relationships can “entail macroeconomic risks and increase opacity.” They may also reflect “the need to secure critical inputs and the presence of information asymmetries.”