The European Commission's recently published 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard reveals a rapidly evolving landscape for global innovation investment, with US-based companies solidifying their position as the world's dominant R&D investors while other regions struggle to keep pace.
The Big Picture: US Firms Outpacing Global Competitors
Among the world's top 2,000 R&D investors, US companies now account for 47.1% of total global R&D investment—€681 billion of the €1.446 trillion invested in 2024. This represents 674 US firms that collectively grew their R&D spending by 7.8% in 2024, significantly outperforming the EU's modest 2.9% growth and China's 3.9% increase.
The gap is widening. While EU companies invested €233.8 billion (16.2% of the global total) and Chinese firms contributed €233 billion (16.1%), US leadership continues to accelerate, particularly in high-growth sectors like ICT software and hardware, where American companies now control an unprecedented share of global R&D activity.
Tech Giants Reshape the Innovation Economy
The most striking finding from the 2025 Scoreboard is the extraordinary concentration of R&D investment among US tech giants. The top five companies—Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple—now account for approximately 15% of all R&D investment among the world's top 2,000 companies, double their share from just a decade ago.
Amazon alone, making its debut in the Scoreboard this year, has become the world's leading R&D investor with an estimated €65 billion in research and development spending. This concentration extends beyond R&D: these five companies' share of profits has surged from 3% to 15% between 2011 and 2024.
Sector-by-Sector Breakdown: Where US Dominance is Strongest
US companies maintain commanding leads in the sectors driving global innovation:
ICT Software: US firms contribute 77% of global R&D investment in this sector, which now represents 24.9% of all Scoreboard R&D investment—the highest concentration in any single sector since the Scoreboard's inception in 2004.
ICT Hardware: Combined with software, the ICT sector accounts for 46.9% of total global R&D investment, with US companies dominating both categories.
Health Industries: American pharmaceutical and biotech firms continue to lead R&D investment in health, which represents 19.9% of total global R&D. While EU companies achieved impressive 13% growth in health R&D (outperforming the US's 7.1% and China's 0.1%), US firms retain the overall investment lead.
Automotive: This represents one area where US companies trail. The EU leads automotive R&D with €87 billion in investment, more than double that of US or Japanese firms. However, the EU automotive sector showed concerning stagnation in 2024 with just 0.8% growth, while Chinese competitors surged ahead with 11.9% growth.
The Infrastructure Investment Surge
Beyond traditional R&D spending, US companies—particularly in ICT software—are making massive capital expenditure commitments. Total capex among Scoreboard companies rose 7.7% globally in 2024, driven primarily by US tech firms whose capital investments surged 50.5% as they race to build data centers and AI infrastructure.
This infrastructure boom reflects a fundamental shift in how innovation happens, as companies aren't just investing in research laboratories but in the computational infrastructure required for AI development, creating a widening advantage for well-capitalized US firms.
What This Means for North American Innovators
The Scoreboard's findings underscore a critical reality for innovative companies across North America: Global competition for innovation leadership is intensifying, and those who fail to maximize their R&D investments risk falling behind.
US companies are winning not just because they're spending more, but because they're systematically leveraging every available resource to fund innovation—including government R&D tax credit programs that many businesses either ignore or fail to optimize.
The R&D Tax Credit Opportunity
While the Scoreboard highlights investment trends among the world's largest companies, smaller and mid-market firms face their own challenge: how to compete for innovation talent and market position while managing constrained budgets.
R&D tax credits represent one of the most underutilized sources of non-dilutive funding for innovative companies. The federal R&D tax credit alone can offset up to 10% of qualified research expenses, with additional state credits often available. Yet many companies either don't claim these credits at all or leave significant money on the table through incomplete claims.
Maximizing Every Innovation Dollar
The concentration trends revealed in the Scoreboard—where a handful of mega-corporations control an ever-larger share of global R&D investment—make it even more critical for smaller innovative companies to access every available funding source.
This isn't just about claiming tax credits. It's about systematically documenting R&D activities, understanding what qualifies under increasingly complex regulations, and building the comprehensive audit defense needed to protect claims when government reviewers come calling.
Traditional accounting firms often miss qualifying activities because R&D tax credits aren't their core expertise. Tech-only solutions automate data collection but lack the nuanced understanding of qualification requirements that separates maximum returns from mediocre ones. Both approaches leave money on the table at a time when competitive pressure demands that innovative companies maximize every available resource.
Looking Ahead: The Innovation Investment Race
The 2025 Scoreboard makes clear that global R&D competition is only accelerating, with US companies leading the charge but facing increasingly sophisticated competition from Chinese firms and sector-specific challenges from EU leaders in areas like automotive and renewable energy.
For North American companies competing in this environment, the question is whether you're accessing all available resources to fund that innovation as efficiently as possible. Government R&D tax credit programs exist precisely to support this kind of innovation investment, but only for companies systematic enough to capture and document their qualifying activities.
The gap between companies that maximize their R&D tax credits and those that don't is growing wider. In a competitive landscape where US tech giants can deploy tens of billions in R&D annually, smaller innovative firms can't afford to leave their own funding on the table.
