Artificial intelligence is an area which has seen rapid growth across a variety of industries in recent years - not least among drinks manufacturing and supply companies.

Figures show that the number of new artificial intelligence roles being advertised for these companies has increased in recent months - with firms across the industry looking to expand their capabilities.

The number of newly advertised roles stood at 226 in Q1 2021. That’s up from 160 in Q4 2020 and up from 185 in Q3 2020.

The figures are compiled by GlobalData, who track the number of new job postings from key companies in various sectors over time. Using textual analysis, these job advertisements are then classified thematically.

GlobalData's thematic approach to sector activity seeks to group key company information by topic to see which companies are best placed to weather the disruptions coming to their industries.

These key themes, which include artificial intelligence, are chosen to cover "any issue that keeps a CEO awake at night".

By tracking them across job advertisements it allows us to see which companies are leading the way on specific issues and which are dragging their heels - and importantly where the market is expanding and contracting.

Looking across key drinks manufacturing and supply companies tracked by GlobalData, the US is currently seeing the largest number of artificial intelligence job advertisements. Last quarter the country saw 70 advertisements - up from 31 in Q4 2020 and 42 in Q3 2020.

On a city level, Atlanta (US) had the most newly advertised artificial intelligence roles in Q1 2021 with 15, followed by Mexico City, (Mexico) with 14, and Plano, (US) with 12.

The biggest growth area has been in the US - which saw 27 job adverts for artificial intelligence in Q4 2020, increasing to 70 in Q1 2021.

In terms of cities, firms are increasing artificial intelligence hires in Mexico City - with 14 roles in the latest quarter - up from zero in the previous one.

GlobalData has compiled a list of top MNCs based on revenue. Any top companies that did not have a subsidiary were removed from the list. The latest company annual reports (2019 and 2020, where available) and websites were analysed for a total of 2,188 companies.

For a subsidiary to be included, the parent company had to have a majority ownership/control in the subsidiary. Affiliates, associates, joint operations and joint ventures were included as long as the ownership criteria was met. Subsidiary information was captured at a country level. Country names were standardised. In total, 216,898 subsidiaries were captured.