Trends Report

The RPA Market Will Reach $2.9 Billion By 2021

While Large, It's Only A Subset Of The $48.5 Billion Broader AI Cubicle Spend

February 13th, 2017
With contributors:
Alex Cullen , Madeline King

Summary

The robotic process automation (RPA) market is heated — but to be sustained, RPA must offer more than plugging gaps in legacy systems. We can forecast spending on RPA solutions based on the projected reduction in cubicle jobs due to artificial intelligence (AI) and related technology. We found that the RPA market, while only $250 million in 2016, will grow to $2.9 billion in 2021. Adding AI to RPA will free it from an exclusive focus on rote tasks. AI will account for an increasing portion of the digital workforce, and in the end, RPA will be a small fraction of the overall AI "cubicle" market spend.

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