Which business sectors in Germany carry out R&D?

Of course, it is still the major carmakers that spend the most on innovative R&D: more than a third of the money invested in R&D by business goes into vehicle manufacturing. This amounted to nearly 30 billion euros in 2022. The automotive industry also employs the largest number of people in research, providing more than 153,000 jobs. The electronics and mechanical engineering industries and firms that provide freelance, scientific and technical services (including biotech research) are the other major investors when it comes to R&D.

Advance of biotech and ICT

However, bright new stars are also appearing in the research sky: driven by the need for vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, biotech companies have massively increased their R&D expenditure.

The information and communications technology (ICT) industry is also seeing rapid growth in research spending. In this sector it is particularly companies that focus on artificial intelligence, apps and cloud computing that are the driving force.

And it is the small firms that are devoting themselves more and more to R&D. In 2021 they increased their expenditure by more than 8 per cent, whereas large companies stepped up their spending by 6.5 per cent.

Facts and figures

The biggest R&D investors are the automotive, electronics and mechanical engineering industries.

Information and communication technologies: the increase in R&D expenditure on programming activities was particularly noticeable in 2022 (a good 15% compared to the previous year).

Medium-sized companies increased their internal R&D expenditure by 11.1% in 2022 – significantly more than the average figure of 7.9%.