Executives clearly understand the importance of machine learning. In a survey, 62% of companies (>$100M Annual Revenue) identified more than five use cases for machine learning, with customer experience and process automation being the most common. Three-quarters of these companies prioritized machine learning as their primary IT initiative.i
Enterprises have backed up these priorities with sizeable investments of money and resources: 83% increased their AI/ML budgets in 2020 and hired many more data scientists, jumping to an average of 50 in 2020 versus just 28 a year earlier.ii