Density of AI postings by metro area clusters

Sherwood News

Charted and mapped: Which American cities are the most ready for AI?

Just 30 top-performing metro areas capture two-thirds of all AI job postings.

7/16/25 9:01AM

Tech companies are tripping over themselves to invest in artificial intelligence, but that wealth is not spreading evenly across the US.

A new analysis from nonprofit Brookings Metro, which is part of the Brookings Institution, looked at data from 195 of the largest US metropolitan areas to determine where they stood as far as AI talent (the availability of AI-capable workers and relevant degree programs), innovation (research programs, AI R&D spending, patents), and adoption (industry uptake, AI startups).

In doing so, Brookings came up with six different categories of AI readiness. Here’s how it categorizes the metro areas, from most ready to reap the benefits of AI development to least:

• “Superstars: The San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., metropolitan areas exhibit unmatched strength across all three AI pillars (talent, innovation, and adoption).

• Star Hubs: This group of 28 metro areas forms a second echelon of uniformly strong AI ecosystems, balancing top‑tier talent, research, and enterprise uptake.

• Emerging Centers: This group of 14 metro areas combines top performance in two pillars with one developing area.

• Focused Movers: These 29 metro areas excel in one pillar while maintaining foundations in the other two.

• Nascent Adopters: This group of 79 metro areas shows moderate performance across all three pillars.

• Others: A group of 43 metro areas that currently lags on multiple pillars.”

Brookings found that much of AI opportunity is concentrated among the usual suspects, with the Bay Area, where tech giants Google, Apple, and Meta have their headquarters, accounting for 13% of national job postings featuring AI skills. (San Francisco and San Jose are the only superstars on the list.) Combined with the Star Hubs, which includes places like Seattle, Washington, DC, and Austin, the 30 top-performing metro areas captured 67% of total AI job postings.

However, there are signs of geographic diffusion beyond the known tech and coastal cities, in places like Pittsburgh; Detroit; Madison, Wisconsin; and Huntsville, Alabama, which rank in the top quartile in at least two pillars, which make them Emerging Centers.

“While the Bay Area’s dominance isn’t going down, we see other places rising up the ranks,” Shriya Methkupally, senior research assistant at Brookings Metro, told Sherwood News. She said the situation is much more spread out than it was the last time Brookings studied this topic in 2021.

Still, Brookings found that more than half of US metro areas were in the bottom two tiers, Nascent Adopters and Others, suggesting “significant shortfalls in talent pipelines, research infrastructure, and enterprise adoption.”

While the Superstars are only on the West Coast, Star Hubs and Emerging Centers are popping up in places around the country, including within the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt.

And here those metro areas are separated out by category and ranked by AI job postings per 100 people employed in the area:

Jon Keegan23h

Google’s Gemini 3.0 reportedly due to be released in December

Google is aiming to release the latest version of its flagship AI model, Gemini 3.0, in December, according to a report from Sources.news.

The updated model is expected to make significant gains that should boost it to the top of the leaderboards, according to the report.

The Gemini app also spent some time at the top of the iOS App Store leaderboards, propelled by Google’s Nano Banana image generation model, which proved popular with users looking to turn themselves into action figures. Gemini briefly knocked ChatGPT from the top spot, which is now occupied by OpenAI’s other hot app, Sora.

Recently, there have been signs of ChatGPT downloads slowing, which could provide an opening for Gemini to gain market share. Adding some premium Gemini features to the free tier is a plan under discussion within Google, per Sources.news.

Sources.news also reports that a “small, secretive team” inside Google is working to integrate Gemini into Apple’s operating systems.

Google readies Gemini 3, Perplexity hits its goal

Sources.news also reports that a “small, secretive team” inside Google is working to integrate Gemini into Apple’s operating systems.

Jon Keegan10/17/25

Meta strikes $30 billion deal with Blue Owl to finance Hyperion data center

Meta’s Hyperion mega data center site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, is currently under construction. The city-sized development will be the home to one of the largest data centers in the world, housing around 2 million pricey GPUs, and will scale up to an eventual 5.5 gigawatts.

So, how is Meta planning to pay for this expensive project?

Bloomberg reports that Meta has signed a deal with asset management company Blue Owl Capital to finance $30 billion to pay for the project, marking what could be the largest private capital deal ever.

According to the report, Blue Owl and Meta would co-own the site, with Meta retaining a 20% stake in the project. PIMCO is also part of the financing for the deal, as the anchor lender.

Raising the massive capital to fund all of these huge AI data center projects is pushing companies to use unusual financing arrangements. The Information reported that xAI made such a deal with Valor Equity Partners worth $20 billion to rent the GPUs needed for its Colossus 2 data center.

Blue Owl Seals Largest Private Capital Deal for Meta’s AI Growth

According to the report, Blue Owl and Meta would co-own the site, with Meta retaining a 20% stake in the project. PIMCO is also part of the financing for the deal, as the anchor lender.

Rani Molla10/17/25

EssilorLuxottica surges to record high after saying Ray-Ban Meta glasses helped boost revenue growth

European eyewear company EssilorLuxottica said during its earnings call yesterday that its Ray-Ban Meta glasses helped boost its revenue growth, something that’s sent the ADR up to a record high.

“Clearly, there is a lift coming from Ray-Ban Meta wearables as a product category,” the company’s CFO, Stefano Grassi, said on the call Thursday. “The contribution from Ray-Ban Meta in wearables, as I mentioned before, is in excess of 4 percentage points overall for the group.”

EssilorLuxottica’s revenue was up 11.7% in the third quarter compared with a year ago.

Meta has a nearly 3% stake in the eyewear company, which it has partnered with on the smart glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also claimed that its Ray-Ban Metas are a hit, saying that the “sales trajectory that we’ve seen is similar to some of the most popular consumer electronics of all time.” We looked at the numbers and aren’t so sure.

Tom Jones

ARR you watching?

10/17/25

The revenue race between Anthropic and OpenAI is getting more heated

Hey Claude, when do you think you’ll start making more money than ChatGPT?

44%

Matt Phillips10/16/25

JPMorgan economists estimate that the basket of stocks they use as a rough gauge of AI’s market impact is now worth about 44% of the S&P 500’s total market cap, up from 26% in 2022.

Using a basket of 30 AI stocks picked by the bank’s equity analysts as a barometer of AI, the economists find that American households have seen their aggregate wealth go up by about $5 trillion over the last year as a result of AI, they reported in a note published Thursday.

They also estimate the surge in stock market wealth could raise annualized US consumer spending by some $180 billion, due to wealth effects.

JPM acknowledges some uncertainty around this estimate, noting that the spending impact could be lower “if the wealth gains are accruing disproportionately to upper income households with lower [marginal propensity to spend].”