- Silicon Valley remains the gravitational center of AI, capturing ~60 percent of all new AI unicorns — even in a remote-first world.
- A second ring of high-signal emerging hubs is forming around talent clusters: Paris, London, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Singapore.
- Geography still matters because AI talent density compounds — talent gravity beats physical location freedom.
For a deeper weekly breakdown of how these hubs interact with capital, talent, and platform power, see This Week in Business AI:
https://businessengineer.ai/p/this-week-in-business-ai-the-2025
THE GEOGRAPHY: AI GRAVITY HAS A CENTER — AND IT’S STILL SAN FRANCISCO
Despite remote work, distributed teams, global hiring, and cloud-native startups, the data shows one iron law:
AI talent concentrates. AI breakthroughs concentrate. And AI company formation concentrates.
The result:
San Francisco / Bay Area accounts for ~60 percent of all new AI unicorns.
No other region comes close.
THE MAP — WHERE 80+ AI UNICORNS EMERGED
DOMINANT HUB (50%+)
San Francisco / Bay Area — ~60%
A world-scale anomaly.
Still the center of gravity for:
- frontier model companies
- infra platforms
- AI-native dev tools
- fastest-growing vertical AI apps
The density effect is self-reinforcing.
MAJOR HUBS (10–20%)
New York — ~12%
NYC’s rise is driven by:
- fintech integration
- enterprise AI buyers
- media + operations talent
- capital access (late stage)
United Kingdom — ~8%
London leads Europe in:
- DeepMind legacy
- finance AI
- model safety research
NOTABLE HUBS (5–10%)
European Union — ~7%
Berlin + Paris dominate this tier.
- Paris: Mistral, Hugging Face influence
- Berlin: defense + robotics talent
- Barcelona/Madrid: early application clusters
Israel — 5–7%
AI security + defense tech powerhouse.
EMERGING HUBS (<5%)
Toronto — Hinton lineage, dense research universities
Tokyo — enterprise AI adoption, robotics pipeline
Singapore — regulatory-friendly AI capital
China — separate ecosystem, massive domestic scale
These hubs matter because they serve as regional critical nodes in the global AI economy.
WHY SAN FRANCISCO STILL DOMINATES
Every structural advantage compounds:
1. Talent Density
The world’s highest concentration of:
- ML researchers
- LLM engineers
- ex-OpenAI/DeepMind/META talent
- Stanford + Berkeley alumni
AI breakthroughs require cognitive adjacency — clusters of people who can push each other.
2. Capital Proximity
All top VCs are within 30 miles:
- a16z
- Sequoia
- Benchmark
- Founders Fund
- Lightspeed
- Accel
Capital speed → company speed → market speed.
3. Network Effects
Researchers learn from each other.
Teams cross-pollinate.
Knowledge flows horizontally and instantly.
This is impossible to recreate in isolation.
4. Infrastructure Density
- Cloud access
- Data centers
- GPU supply chains
- Early-adopter customers
AI is compute-heavy; geography shapes compute access.
EMERGING HUBS TO WATCH
Paris
Leading the European AI renaissance.
- Mistral’s influence
- Strong national strategy
- Elite ML talent density
London
AI finance capital of Europe.
- DeepMind legacy
- LLM safety think-tanks
- Enterprise AI adoption
Tel Aviv
Defense + cybersecurity AI.
- Elite engineering culture
- Hard-tech focus
- Global security demand
Toronto
Academic epicenter.
- Hinton’s legacy
- University of Toronto
- Vector Institute
Singapore
Regulation, capital, and compute hubs.
Each hub builds on its comparative advantage, not on imitation.
THE SIGNAL: TALENT GRAVITY > REMOTE WORK
After the pandemic, many predicted the end of geographic clustering.
The data shows the opposite:
- AI talent consolidates
- Unicorn formation concentrates
- Capital follows density
- Breakthroughs require collocated expertise
AI is not distributed.
AI is gravitational.
And that gravity still points toward Silicon Valley — with a growing ring of high-signal satellite hubs building their own defensible advantages.
For weekly intelligence on AI markets, strategy, and venture formation, see:
https://businessengineer.ai/p/this-week-in-business-ai-the-2025
