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 published on 1 October 2026. 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 investment was funded by AI companies.
What the 55.2% figure measures
BIS Bulletin 137, “Circular relationships among AI firms,” reports that AI firms received 55.2% of their incoming investment from other AI firms over 2021–2025. The authors are Jon Frost, Rudraksh Kansal, Kumar Rishabh, Vatsala Shreeti and Leanne Si Ying Zhang.
In plain language, the analysis found that AI companies were a major source of investment flowing into other AI companies. The percentage is an incoming-investment share. It is not a count of companies, a share of all AI-related financing, or a measure of the whole AI economy’s spending.
Why 28.7% is a different statistic
The bulletin also reports that 28.7% of AI firms’ investment deals by value involved an AI-firm target during 2021–2025. This answers a different question: among investment deals made by AI firms, what share of deal value went to targets that were also AI firms?
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The 55.2% figure looks at the source of investment received by AI firms; the 28.7% figure looks at the destination of AI firms’ investment deals by value. They have different perspectives and denominators, so they should not be treated as competing estimates or added together.
How often did investment overlap with a supply-chain relationship?
BIS separately examined AI-to-AI investment deals that also involved a commercial supply-chain relationship between the investor and target. It reports two measures for 2021–2025:
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| Measure | Share | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| By deal count | 16.1% | The share of AI-to-AI investment deals that also involved a commercial supply-chain relationship. |
| By deal value | 46.4% | The share of AI-to-AI investment deal value associated with such a relationship. |
The gap matters: a count-based share and a value-based share can tell different stories. The reported supply-chain overlap was much more prominent when measured by deal value than by number of deals. Neither percentage means that every AI-to-AI investment had a commercial relationship, nor does the count measure tell you how much money was involved.
Why companies may invest in business partners
The BIS authors say circular investment relationships may reflect firms’ need to secure critical inputs and the presence of information asymmetries. A company may have a business reason to invest in a firm that supplies an important input or with which it has a commercial relationship. When investors and targets know different things about a deal or its prospects, information asymmetry can also shape investment decisions.
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The authors also identify macroeconomic risks and increased opacity. These are risks and features highlighted in the bulletin, not proof that a particular investment is improper or that the AI sector is a financial bubble. The presence of a commercial relationship alone does not establish the terms, purpose or quality of an individual investment.
What the statistic cannot tell you about AI funding
The 55.2% result is not a complete account of capital flowing into the AI economy. It should not be restated as a percentage of AI companies’ total spending, all financing for AI, corporate capital expenditure, or AI revenue. Those are different quantities.
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Venture-capital figures have their own scope limits. The OECD’s 2025 report cautions that venture-capital investment in AI firms is only one vantage point, alongside other forms of investment such as public companies’ internal investment and government investment. That is a scope warning, not a directly comparable estimate to BIS’s incoming-investment measure.
The BIS publication summary identifies the headline measures, authors, date and interpretation, but does not establish enough detail here to reconstruct the transaction sample, underlying database or estimation method. The figures should therefore be presented as the bulletin’s reported results, without assuming more about their construction than is stated.
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How to read the finding
- Source: 55.2% is the share of incoming investment in AI firms that came from other AI firms.
- Destination: 28.7% is the share by value of AI firms’ investment deals involving AI-firm targets.
- Commercial overlap: Supply-chain relationships appeared in 16.1% of AI-to-AI deals by count and 46.4% by value.
- Interpretation: BIS frames these relationships as potentially serving input-security needs and reflecting information asymmetries, while also raising opacity and macroeconomic-risk concerns.
BIS Bulletin 137 was published on 1 October 2026. Its authors state that their views do not necessarily reflect those of the BIS or its member central banks.
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