20 Largest R&D Companies in the World

Ruchi Gupta
9 min read

In this article, we will be taking a look at the 20 largest R&D companies in the world. If you want to go straight to the top five companies, you can go directly to see the 5 Largest R&D Companies in the World.

Research and Development (R&D) refers to activities that organizations, including businesses and governments, engage in to innovate processes, services, or products. If more R&D means more innovation, 2022 was the best year because, according to a United Nations (UN) report, global patent application rose to over 278,000. The report notes that the patent applications represent the “highest number ever recorded in a single year”.

But the sudden influx of new patent applications does not come out of thin air. For example, according to the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022, the number of scientific articles – usually, the results of R&D are communicated through scientific articles – crossed the 2 million market for the first time in 2021. This suggests that much more money has been spent in the past few years to fund researchers. Their studies are only starting to generate positive returns. But who is funding the R&D?

Both governments and private sector fund scientists to help them answer specific questions or solve a particular problem. From a general perspective, investment in innovation has grown tremendously over the past two decades. For example, according to the United States’ National Science Board, global R&D expenditure in 2000 was around $726 billion, but the value tripled to approximately $2.4 trillion in 2019. While the US has led the global R&D expenditure (on country basis) for many decades, this lead has been increasingly narrowing. For example, the US share of global R&D expenditure was 37.1% in 2000, 29.0% in 2010, and 27.3% in 2019.

A similar dynamic is taking place in the private sector. Two decades ago, there was no company outside the US and the EU that competed among the top R&D spenders in the world. But the picture is different, especially in the past decade where more companies from Asia (particularly India and China) allocate a considerable part of their revenue to innovation. According to the latest Global Innovation 1000 study – this is PwC research conducted once every five years, the latest report was released in 2018 – corporates spend huge sums every year on R&D. Most of the leading companies in this ranking are also the most valuable globally. They are able to expend billions annually to R&D because their huge revenues. Also, the research reveals that the world’s top corporate innovators are overwhelmingly technology, motor vehicle, and biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies.

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