The use of artificial intelligence in business valuation: Status quo and trends based on a literature review

AI has now found its way into business valuation. While the traditional calculations of valuation remain unchanged, the process of data collection will change enormously. The first part of this work will give an overview of widely spread machine learning algorithms which may be used in business valuation. To get an overview of the current state of machine learning applications in business valuation, a systematic literature review was conducted in the second part of this work. This review focused on the publications between 2015 and the first quarter of 2021. In this systematic literature review, the current state of the field is surveyed. Algorithms and trends are analyzed to see which machine learning methods are already in use. Other data, such as publishing years and countries of the papers, are also analyzed in detail. Even though the topic is clearly gaining more and more attention, the current uses of those algorithms are clearly in development. The classic methods of classification and linear regression, which are part of the supervised learning family, are the clear favorites of the current applications. The future goal is to create a new piece of software which uses a popular machine learning algorithm to modernize business valuation.