According to recent data reported by Invest in Estonia, local companies widely use AI solutions in several business areas for optimizing business processes, automating customer service, product quality control, and present and future risk mitigation. Its use is far more common among large enterprises (more than 20%). The most frequently deployed AI technologies include text mining, machine or deep learning, and image recognition.
Financial and insurance activities lead the pack with a 28% adoption rate, followed by ICT at 21%, and the energy sector at 14%. In contrast, manufacturing as a whole lags behind, with only 3% of enterprises. However, those involved in the production of computer, electronic, and optical products exhibit a 12% adoption rate.
Approximately 1.7% of enterprises have leveraged AI for marketing or sales, while another 1.7% have harnessed it for ICT security. In addition, 1.6% of enterprises have employed AI to streamline their business administration processes, and 1.2% have turned to AI to optimize production processes. AI in Estonia has found utility in logistics, accounting, auditing, finance management, and even R&D or innovation activities.
Indeed, Estonia’s efficient, secure, and transparent ecosystem has earned the nation the title of the world’s most advanced digital society. In the public sector, for instance, more implementation of AI allows the government to increase user-centric services, improve the process of data analysis, and make the country work more efficiently by achieving the goals of e-government.
Enterprises employ various strategies to acquire AI technologies. The majority (3.2%), prefer to purchase ready-to-use commercial software solutions. 2.8% opt for the purchase and modification of commercial software to tailor it to their specific needs. An additional 1.6% of enterprises take an open-source approach, using software or systems that their in-house experts modify. Nearly 2% of enterprises choose to tailor and develop their AI technologies in-house.
There’s a growing trend in procuring security software applications, including antivirus and network access control solutions, as cloud computing services. Online backup services have seen a significant surge, with 44% of enterprises now utilizing them, compared to 37% in 2021.