AI-Savvy Brands Erupting in Value, Survey Shows

People are increasingly experiencing brands through a virtual avalanche of AI-shaped moments, from personalized feeds to LLMs (large language models) that influence what they see and choose online and elsewhere. That, in turn, is creating big shifts in brand value, a new study has found.

Among the biggest changes in the 21^st edition of Kantar BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands and the reasons for them are:

• Google has returned to the top spot for the first time since 2018, pushing perennial #1 Apple into second place. Google’s rise is due to the integration of its multimodal Gemini AI personal assistant into all its existing products, the introduction of agentic features in its search function and a continued investment in data centers.
• Zara has become the world’s most valuable apparel brand, overtaking longtime leader Nike – a clear testament to Zara’s ability to build relevance through personalized AI-powered shopping experiences.
• Hermès has overtaken Louis Vuitton to claim the title of world’s most valuable luxury brand. It’s a reflection of an enduring commitment to understand its diverse audience, hiring British designer Grace Wales Bonner as the first Black woman to lead the prestigious tailor.
• Two LLM AI companies made noteworthy moves: Anthropic’s Claude joined the top 100 roster for the first time, landing at No. 27, and OpenAI Group’s ChatGPT scored the list’s highest year-on-year brand value increase, rising by 285%.
• A continued rise in global prominence of Asian brands – especially those from China, such as Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok.

“The brands outperforming the market are using AI to bring judgement back into the system: to identify which signals to trust, connect what people are doing to real business choices, and do so quickly and confidently,” said Martin Guerrieria, Head of Kantar BrandZ, a marketing data and analytics firm. “In a market this fragmented, sustained growth is coming from clarity.”

Indeed, Kantar’s latest data shows that the power of the biggest brands has persisted and grown, with the combined value of the BrandZ global top 100 hitting a record $13.1 trillion, which is up a whopping 22% from last year’s total.