Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Fig. 3-4: Total AI-related funding (funding and expenses) granted to the Austrian Research Promotion Agency 
(FFG), 2017–2019
Austrian Space Applications Programme
(ASAP)
BASIS
BRIDGE
Frontrunner
COIN
COMET
Research Studios Austria
FoKo
AT:net
Federal state TP cooperations
Complexity Science
Energy Research (e!MISSION)
ICT of the Future
KIRAS Security Research
Mobility of the Future
Production for the Future
Note: The figure only shows the programmes that made up at least 1% of the total AI-related funding amount.
Source: Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) funding statistics 2020. A text mining process developed by the Austrian Research 
Promotion Agency (FFG) was used to classify the programmes.

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3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
173
carried out. This indicates that AI is seeing strong 
growth in research funding, with more being award-
ed in these three years (€372.54 million) than in the 
six years before that. Fig. 3-4 uses different colours 
to illustrate how these funds were distributed across 
the individual areas of the Austrian Research Promo-
tion Agency (FFG) and the associated funding pro-
grammes.
Nearly half of all funds awarded between 2017 
and 2019 went to the General Programmes, around 
one third supporting the Thematic Programmes (es-
pecially ICT of the Future, Production of the Future 
and Mobility for the Future) and a further 15% the 
Structural Programmes (of which about a quarter is 
personnel-related funding such as talented individu-
als or spin-off fellowships). The biggest programmes 
in terms of funding AI projects are thus the General 
Programme, ICT of the Future, Production of the Fu-
ture, COMET and Mobility for the Future.