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

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: