Report: The 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard

The 2025 Scoreboard analyses the world's top 2 000 industrial R&D investors, responsible for over 90% of R&D performed by the business sector globally, based on the financial information in the latest published audited accounts of firms. Following the introduction, chapter 2 analyses the main global trends and benchmarks the EU’s top R&D investing companies against global competitors. Chapter 3 provides details by sector, and chapter 4 does a deep-dive on a subsample of the EU’s top 800 R&D investing firms. Chapter 5 analyses R&D internationalisation and chapter 6 key green technologies.

Main findings
Global R&D investment growth maintained last year’s momentum.
In 2024, global R&D investment grew by EUR 85.8 billion (6.3% nominal growth rate), totalling EUR 1 446 billion, slightly above last year’s rate (6%) but below the average annual growth rate since 2014 (7.5%). Among the Scoreboard companies, the 291 companies from the rest of the world (ROW) recorded the highest yearly growth (8.1%), followed by the 674 US firms (7.8%) and  the 192 Japanese firms (7.1%). Growth was more moderate among the 318 EU‑based companies (2.9%) and the 525 Chinese firms (3.9%). For the EU, the figure constitutes the lowest R&D investment growth rate since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (see Figure 1), and for China the  lowest R&D investment growth rate on record signalling a slowdown of innovation activity in both regions (see section 2.4).