Curated Measures

AI CapEx and R&D

Data through Oct 15, 2026 Updated Oct 22, 2026 4 series

Track how often companies discuss artificial intelligence alongside R&D and capital expenditure commitments on calls.

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At a glance

Coverage

Public companies

Period
Jan 2017 – Oct 15, 2026
Updates
Monthly
Files

CSV: time series, firm panel

Source

English earnings calls

Overview

AI Investment Barometer counts sentences in earnings calls where artificial intelligence terms co-occur in the same sentence with capital expenditure (CapEx) or research and development (R&D) spending terms. Alongside the headline intersection series (AI mentions AND (R&D or CapEx)), the dataset includes the standalone AI mentions, CapEx, and R&D series so you can benchmark AI-linked investment discussion against overall AI discussion or total corporate investment commentary.

Use it to

  • Separate concrete AI spending commentary (CapEx and R&D) from general AI mentions.
  • Compute AI's share of total CapEx or R&D discussion across sectors, firms, and quarters.
  • Track the diffusion of AI investment commentary from technology providers to adopting industries.
  • Merge call-level AI investment sentence counts with reported capital expenditures and R&D expenses.

What it does not measure

  • Measures sentence-level co-occurrence of AI and investment terms, not dollar capital expenditures or R&D budgets.
  • Requires AI and investment terms to appear in the same sentence; multi-sentence discussions where AI is named in one sentence and spending in the next are not counted in the intersection series.
  • The standalone CapEx and R&D series measure all capital expenditure and R&D discussion, not AI-specific spending.

Explore the data

What to look for

From Q1 2017 through Q4 2022, sentences combining AI and R&D/CapEx averaged just 0.002 to 0.005 per call. Following the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, the series more than doubled in Q2 2023 (0.013) and again in Q3 2023 (0.025), then climbed to 0.049 in Q4 2025 and 0.074 sentences per call in Q3 2026—nearly fifteen times its pre-2023 baseline.

Click the chart to open the series, where you can filter it by headquarters country.

AI mentions AND (R&D or CapEx) over time

Date range: January 1, 2017 to October 15, 2026.

Time-series chart for AI mentions AND (R&D or CapEx) over time.
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Mean matched sentences per earnings call, measured in Matched sentences, shown quarterly without smoothing. Q1 2017 to Q4 2026, 40 data points. Higher values mean more topic discussion. Points marked Partial cover only the reported portion of that period.

Explore series

Series

4 total Data through Oct 15, 2026

Browse the related series and open any series for its full query, filters, and methodology notes.

Methodology and data

Methodology

The dataset is built from sentence-level queries combined at the sentence level:

  1. AI mentions (only): Matches sentences containing core AI terminology (artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, large language models), technical concepts (neural networks, natural language processing, computer vision, foundation models, inference), application terms (AI agents, chatbots, intelligent automation, predictive maintenance), or named models and enterprise AI platforms.
  2. CapEx (General infrastructure and fixed-asset investments): Matches sentences containing capital-spending phrases (capex, capital expenditure, capital spending, capital investment, discretionary capital, maintenance capital, expansion capital, and related terms).
  3. R&D (Innovation and intellectual capital investments): Matches sentences combining research and innovation terms (R&D, research, product development, innovation, patents) with expenditure terms (spend, investment, expense, cost, expenditure).
  4. AI mentions AND (R&D or CapEx): Combined dataset (AND) keeping only sentences that match AI mentions (only) and also match either CapEx or R&D.

Full query strings are visible on each underlying series page.

Changes to this dataset

Updated 13 October 2026. We recalculated this dataset's series using our new search engine. They now run through 30 September 2026. Values for earlier quarters can differ slightly from the previous release, which is available on request.

References

NL Analytics. (2026). AI CapEx and R&D [Data set]. NL Analytics. https://apps.nlanalytics.tech/curated-measures/ai-investment-barometer/

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