SAP, Microsoft, and Amazon are among the leading companies in the machine learning theme, according to the latest Thematic Scorecard for the application software sector from GlobalData.

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that gives computer systems the ability to learn and improve from data without being explicitly programmed.

All three companies gained the highest Thematic score (5 out of 5) for the machine learning theme in GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard for the application software sector. A Thematic score of 5 out of 5 indicates that the company’s competitive position in this theme will significantly improve its future performance.

Also identified as leading players in this theme are IBM, Google, Apple, Baidu and Facebook.

On their tail, with scores of 4 out of 5, are Splunk, Autodesk, iFlytek, Nvidia, Cloudera, Alteryx, Huawei, Adobe, ServiceNow, Amdocs, OpenText, Software AG, New Relic, Zendesk, and Progress Software.

GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard ranks companies within a sector on the basis of overall leadership in the 10 themes that matter most to their industry, generating a leading indicator of future performance.