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Between 2021 and 2025, 55.2% of incoming investment in AI firms came from other AI firms, according to a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) analysis. The figure describes the source of investment in the firms covered by that analysis. It does not mean that 55.2% of all AI spending, company revenue, or capital expenditure was funded by AI companies.
What does the 55.2% figure mean?
BIS Bulletin 137, “Circular relationships among AI firms”, reports that other AI firms supplied 55.2% of incoming investment in AI firms over 2021–2025. The bulletin was published on 1 October 2026 by Jon Frost, Rudraksh Kansal, Kumar Rishabh, Vatsala Shreeti, and Leanne Si Ying Zhang.
In plain language, the statistic says that AI firms were an important source of investment entering other AI firms during the period. It is a share of incoming investment, not a share of all money spent on AI or a measure of how much AI companies invested in total.
How is that different from the 28.7% figure?
The bulletin reports a second measure: 28.7% of AI firms’ investment deals by value involved an AI-firm target in 2021–2025. The two percentages answer different questions and use different framings:
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- 55.2%: What share of incoming investment in AI firms came from other AI firms?
- 28.7%: What share of AI firms’ investment deals by value involved an AI firm as the target?
They should not be treated as competing estimates of the same thing. One focuses on the source of incoming investment; the other describes where AI firms’ investment deals went.
How often did those investments overlap with commercial supply chains?
BIS also examined AI-to-AI investment deals with a commercial supply-chain relationship between the investor and target. Its reported figures differ depending on whether the deals are counted or weighted by value:
| Measure | Share with a commercial supply-chain relationship | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Deal count | 16.1% | Share of AI-to-AI investment deals by number |
| Deal value | 46.4% | Share of AI-to-AI investment deal value |
The larger value share means that deals with a reported supply-chain relationship represented a bigger proportion of value than of the number of deals. A count-based view and a value-weighted view can therefore tell different stories. These figures concern the commercial overlap BIS reported; they do not establish that every AI-to-AI investment had such a relationship.
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Why might AI firms invest in one another?
The BIS authors say circular investment relationships may reflect economic features such as the need to secure critical inputs and the presence of information asymmetries. For example, a firm may have a commercial reason to support a company that provides an important input, while investors may have imperfect information about the other firm or its prospects. These are possible explanations offered in the bulletin, not proof of the motive behind any particular deal.
The authors also warn that such relationships can increase opacity and entail macroeconomic risks. That framing warrants attention to how investment and commercial ties interact; it does not, by itself, prove that a specific investment is improper or that the AI sector is a financial bubble.
Does 55.2% mean AI funding is mostly circular?
It supports a narrower conclusion: in the BIS analysis for 2021–2025, other AI firms accounted for 55.2% of incoming investment in AI firms. The supply-chain figures add that commercial relationships were present in some AI-to-AI deals, with a greater share by value than by count. Together, these findings describe interconnected investment and business relationships, not the entirety of AI funding or spending.
Scope matters. The OECD’s 2025 report on venture-capital investment in AI explicitly covers venture capital, which is only one vantage point. It cautions that this scope differs from other forms of investment, including internal investment by public companies and government investment. Its figures should not be treated as directly comparable to the BIS incoming-investment measure or as a complete tally of AI-related funding.
What the figures do—and do not—establish
- They establish: BIS’s reported shares for incoming investment, AI-firm investment deals by value, and supply-chain overlap in AI-to-AI deals during 2021–2025.
- They do not establish: the share of all AI spending, revenues, corporate capital expenditure, or every form of financing that came from AI companies.
- They do not establish: that all AI-to-AI deals had a commercial supply-chain relationship, or that a particular investment was made for an improper reason.
The accessible BIS publication summary identifies the headline measures and interpretation, but does not provide enough methodological detail to reconstruct the exact sample construction, transaction database, or estimation method. The figures should therefore be reported as the bulletin’s results rather than extended to a broader population without that detail.
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The bulletin states: “Circular investment relationships reflect key economic features such as the need to secure critical inputs and the presence of information asymmetries, yet they entail macroeconomic risks and increase opacity.” Its authors also note that “The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BIS or its member central banks.”
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