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The modifier here:
Seeing the potential in data, the industry has already started to employ cognitive computing.*
Grammarly identifies Seeing the potential in data as a dangling modifier. However, I feel that this sentence modifies the subject. For example (the industry sees the potential in data).
Am I wrong?
No, I think you're correct. As explained in the Purdue Online Writing Lab, a dangling modifier is:
a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence.
They give this example:
Having finished the assignment, the TV was turned on.
The modifier refers doesn't refer to the TV that's mentioned in the sentence, it refers to the person who turned it on.
In your example, it's clear that "seeing" refers to what the industry has done, so it's not dangling.
I believe Grammerly is merely being overly cautious, since it doesn't have enough understanding of context to tell whether "the industry" is capable of "seeing the potential in data". Perhaps when the subject of the main clause isn't a word it recognizes as an animate object (a person or animal), it assumes that this sentence structure contains a dangling modifier -- it's hard for a computer program to know when some nouns can be anthropomorphized. The designers may have a general philosophy that false positives are acceptable, because the user can easily ignore them when they know better.
It's not. "Seeing" clearly relates to "the industry." There is nothing ambiguous about which noun the particle references. The tense, however, is a little odd given the "already" as a comment shrewdly pointed out.
"Having seen ..., the industry has already ..." or "The industry, having seen ..., has already ..."
The two sentences above show that there is nothing wrong with the placement of the participial phrase.
