The project aims at providing EU policy-makers, academia, and other institutional and economic actors with robust empirical scientific-sound evidence and analysis on the contribution of private-sector R&D to sustainable competitiveness and "prosperity" in the EU.
The 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard provides economic information from the latest financial accounts (Financial Year 2024) of the world's top 2000 R&D investors, as well as the top 800 companies based in the EU. These companies account for over 90% of global R&D funded by the business sector.
R&D investment by EU-headquartered Scoreboard companies reached 233.8 billion euros in 2024. This is an investment growth rate of 2.9%, down from 9.3% in 2023.
Highest investing industrial sectors in the EU were automotive, health and ICT hardware. The sectors with the highest R&D investment growth rate were energy, construction & materials, and health.
The top 2 000 R&D investing companies worldwide invested a total of EUR 1 446.2 billion in R&D in 2024. Investment increased by EUR 85.8 billion, corresponding to a growth rate of 6.3% compared to last year’s 6.0%.
Four sectors accounted for over 80% of total R&D by the top 2000 companies: ICT software (24.9%), ICT hardware (22.0%), health (19.9%), and automotive (13.6%).
Global R&D investment is becoming increasingly concentrated, driven largely by the top 5 investing companies (Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Apple). Over the past decade, these
In line with the Commission’s open science practice , the Scoreboard makes its database publicly available for stakeholders to conduct their benchmarking and monitoring exercises. Here below you can find and download the data from the 2025 Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard in two datasets. One with the world's top 2000 R&D investors (years 2011-2024), and another one with the top 800 companies based in the EU.
Download All Data World 2000
Download All Data EU 800
25 Mar 2026 | 15 May 2026
