Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can solve problems on their own without human intervention. AI could improve production efficiency, safety and quality in almost every industry.
We have updated the data in this list since we first published it in 2021. Find previous datasets in the National Library of Australia’s Trove website archive.
These technologies can be used for:
Australia’s research strengths in critical technologies underpin new economic opportunities and sovereign capabilities.
From 2022 to 2024, Australia’s research trends are consistent across critical technology fields, with AI seeing a notable increase in publications.
Research quality increased slightly from 2022 to 2024. We define quality as the percentage of publications in the top 10% most cited publications in the field.
Research specialisation increased slightly from 2022 to 2024. We define specialisation as the ratio of the share of a field in the publications that come from a given country to the share of the same field in the global total of publications.
Australian research publications for AI technologies field, 2022–2024.
| 2022 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Publications | 5540 | 7888 |
Intellectual property (IP) rights are vital to help support the translation of critical technology research outcomes into products, businesses and new capabilities.
AI (standard) patent applications and AI (standard) patent applications by Australian applicants grew consistently from 2017 to 2022.
AI technologies (standard) patent applications in Australia, 2017–2022.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | % growth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patent applications | 128 | 303 | 473 | 545 | 885 | 1007 | 686.72 |
AI technologies Australian applicant (standard) patent applications in Australia, 2017–2022.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patent applications | 9 | 16 | 27 | 36 | 66 | 72 |
Venture capital (VC) investment data can help assess Australia’s critical technology capability. The data acts as a real-time signal of where private investment is supporting innovation.
Overall VC investment in Australian increased from $355 million in 2023 to $554 million in 2024. This reflects how fast AI has grown from near zero in 2014 to around 26% of VC activity across all critical technology fields in 2024.
Venture capital investment in Australian AI technologies firms, 2014–2024.
| Year | VC investment in $millions |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 16.69 |
| 2015 | 41.04 |
| 2016 | 58.71 |
| 2017 | 57.85 |
| 2018 | 124.14 |
| 2019 | 334.65 |
| 2020 | 263.02 |
| 2021 | 873.78 |
| 2022 | 683.49 |
| 2023 | 354.53 |
| 2024 | 553.83 |
| Total | 3361.73 |
Australia must continue to improve its AI capability so we can:
Australia is focusing on 3 areas of AI to transform existing industries and build new ones:
CSIRO collected all publication data from Web of Science systems and covers 2022 and 2024.
We sourced all patent data from IP Australia. The data covers 2017 to 2022 for standard patent applications filed in Australia. It does not include innovation patents, following a 2022 review phasing them out. We note innovation filings were on the rise during this period, which led to a spike in the years leading up to ceasing.
DISR collected all VC data in March 2025 using Pitchbook and covers 2014 to 2024.
