We have identified some 125 companies that are active in supplying appropriate semiconductor chips and AI video analytic software products. New companies are being added to this list almost weekly and although we cannot claim that it includes all suppliers it is probably today the most comprehensive listing on this subject.

We have broken it down into 4 main groups. The first group containing 81 companies that specialize in video analytic software products with the majority having worked within the video surveillance market for more than 15 years. The majority of these companies are now in the process of developing AI video surveillance solutions in conjunction with StartUps that have entered the market with AI solutions. These companies will be strong contenders to take a significant share of this market over the next 10 years.

The next largest group are Video Surveillance / Camera manufacturers of which we have identified 24 that also have video analytics software products with most now developing AI versions, many in conjunction with AI software specialists. These companies have large heritage estates of existing cameras that could be updated with AI video analytics and consequently they are in a strong position to take a major share of this market.

We have identified some 13 companies from the IT & Semiconductor business that are developing GPU chips and software platforms that the specialist software companies are using to produce their deep learning algorithms.

Finally the 4th group contains 8 companies that have AI Video Analytics products with most of then looking to expand through software as a service (SaaS). Amazon (AWS) is one of these companies. They are taking secure video streams from their clients connected devices and apply machine learning analytics and other processing in their cloud infrastructure.

Our analysis shows that 35% of all the companies are based in the USA and include some of the largest and leading companies in the world. Other prominent countries include the UK, Taiwan, China and India. As we discuss in our report China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in companies that are researching AI Technology.

Nvidia has emerged as the early leader in AI chips and is particularly strong in video analytics. Nvidia's edge is that its PC gaming processors can be scaled up to handle AI computations, thanks to their "parallel processing" circuitry that can handle complex multiple tasks. Just a few years ago, AI research projects required hundreds of computers networked together to process complex software.

The Nvidia Inception Program is designed to nurture Startups that are revolutionising industries with advances in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. Designed as a virtual incubator program, inception is helping Startups during critical stages of product development.

The Chinese Government has publically announced that its strategy is to set out for worldwide dominance in AI technology. Its Internet giants Baidu, Alibaba Group Holdings and Tencent Holdings are pouring money into AI research and hiring top data scientists.

China produces around 40% of the world’s video cameras and consequently will generate massive amounts of raw data to train AI systems in how to make predictions. So there's good reason to think China will make breakthroughs in developing computer algorithms for this application.

Building up AI engineering talent is key to the plan. Chinese scholars are already churning out AI research papers at a fast pace. Patent grants and applications have soared in robotics and other areas. Chinese Internet companies have set up AI research departments in Silicon Valley, whilst Baidu and other companies are paying top salaries to lure AI data scientists.

Click here to view more details about our new report The Global Market for Intelligent Video Analytics 2018 to 2023.