Leading the Pack: Trends for the Top 200 Engineering Research and Development (ER&D) Enterprises 2025

In 2024, the ER&D market faced persistent inflationary pressures, geopolitical uncertainties, and supply chain realignments, prompting companies to index into more cautious and selective investment strategies. Despite the headwinds, enterprises spent on themes such as generative AI innovation, advanced connectivity solutions, and sustainable product development. Companies prioritized these areas to address the rising consumer demand for intelligent and environmentally responsible products, while maintaining competitiveness through technological innovation.

This study analyzes the top 200 enterprises globally, ranked by their ER&D expenditures in 2024. These companies are segmented across ten key industries based on where their R&D investments are most concentrated. The analysis includes insights into ER&D spend intensity (spend as a percentage of revenue), growth patterns, and key investment themes.

The focus of this research is only on business-financed ER&D spend. It excludes non-ER&D spend (such as clinical ER&D expenditure in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology and molecular development ER&D expenditure in chemicals) as well as government-sponsored ER&D spend. Enterprises that do not specifically report ER&D expenditure in their annual reports have been excluded from this analysis. Enterprises cutting across more than one industry have been featured under the industry where the proportion of ER&D spend is the highest.