Industry Dominates AI Models, Academia Leads Research Citations

In a significant shift, nearly 90% of notable AI models in 2024 originated from industry labs, showcasing their lead in practical AI development. Conversely, academic institutions continue to be the primary source of highly cited (top 100) research publications over the past three years.

The top 3

  1. Top Industry-Developed AI Models by Influence: Major industry players like OpenAI and Google lead in developing influential AI models. OpenAI's GPT series, including GPT-5 and GPT-4, are widely used, with GPT-5 powering ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Google's Gemini Ultra model is another frontier AI, with an estimated training cost of $191 million. Google has released the most foundation models since 2019, totaling 40, followed by OpenAI with 20.
  2. Leading Academic Institutions in AI Research: While industry now dominates large-scale AI model development, academic institutions like Stanford University, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and the University of Toronto remain crucial hubs for foundational AI research and talent development. Stanford's AI Lab, for instance, has been central to many AI breakthroughs since 1963. These universities are vital for conducting basic research that may not be immediately profitable but serves the public interest.
  3. Academia's Top 3 Most Cited Foundational AI Papers: Among the most cited foundational AI papers, "Deep residual learning for image recognition" (2016, preprint 2015) is ranked number one in Nature's list of most-cited papers of the twenty-first century. Other highly influential academic papers include "Random forests" (2001) and "Attention is all you need" (2017), which have profoundly impacted various AI fields.

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