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:

Claire Yubin Oh29m

TikTok closes deal to operate in the US

TikTok has finally sealed its deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to manage its US operations.

On Friday, the social media company announced that its US arm will now be led by three “managing investors” — Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX, each with a 15% holding — whilst ByteDance retains 19.9% of the business, and a swath of other investors, including Michael Dell’s family office, round out the cap table.

The joint venture will be operated by a seven person majority-American board of directors which includes TikTok CEO Shou Chew, with Adam Presser, previously TikTok’s head of operations, trust, and safety, as its CEO.

Though the valuation of the new venture has not been shared, Vice President JD Vance has previously cited the market value of TikTok’s US operations at about $14 billion, just topping Snap and lower than Pinterest.

The deal closes the platform’s battle, which kicked off in earnest in August 2020 when President Donald Trump first tried to ban TikTok over national security concerns. The announcement notes that the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will “secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm.” Trump celebrated the deal, which has been signed off by both the US and Chinese governments per Reuters, in a Truth Social post, saying TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World.”

Rani Molla18h

Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxis are operating without drivers, sending stock higher

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Robotaxis are now operating in Austin without a safety monitor. Tesla has been testing driverless cars in the area for about a month, and Musk had previously said the company would remove safety drivers by the end of 2025.

It’s unclear how many exactly of the roughly 50 Robotaxis the company operates in the area don’t have drivers. Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time,” Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, posted shortly after Musk. Ethan McKenna, the person behind Robotaxi Tracker, estimates it’s two or three vehicles.

What is clear is that the move is good for Tesla’s stock, which is currently up 3.5%, extending its gains after Musk’s tweet. Morgan Stanley said yesterday that it considers the removal of safety drivers a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD rollout.” Unsupervised Full Self-Driving is widely considered to be integral to the would-be autonomous company’s value proposition.

At the World Economic Forum earlier on Thursday, Musk said, “Self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point.”

Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.

Congrats to the @Tesla_AI team!

If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars. https://t.co/OnP8gredWD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026

Jon Keegan20h

Survey: CEOs and workers have wildly different thoughts on AI productivity gains

One of the main reasons companies are rushing to adopt AI is to give their workers the miraculous productivity boost that AI companies have been promising — and believe will quickly earn back their investment.

But now that companies have been using AI for a while, a growing perception gap is emerging between the C-suite and their employees.

The Wall Street Journal reported on new findings by research firm Section, which surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

More than 70% of the corporate executives in the survey said they were “excited” by AI, and 19% of them said the tools have saved them more than 12 hours of work per week.

But nonmanagement workers had a very different take on AI. Almost 70% of this group said AI made them feel “anxious or overwhelmed,” and 40% said the tools saved them no time at all.

CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.

The Wall Street Journal reported on new findings by research firm Section, which surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

More than 70% of the corporate executives in the survey said they were “excited” by AI, and 19% of them said the tools have saved them more than 12 hours of work per week.

But nonmanagement workers had a very different take on AI. Almost 70% of this group said AI made them feel “anxious or overwhelmed,” and 40% said the tools saved them no time at all.

Rani Molla20h

Tesla jumps as Musk says he expects Optimus sales next year, European and Chinese FSD approval next month

Tesla CEO Elon Musk now says he thinks the company’s Optimus robots will be for sale to the public “by the end of next year.”

According to Musk, “That’s when we are confident that there is very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high.”

Like many of Musk’s other timelines, that’s later than he previously predicted. In 2024, for example, Musk said the AI robots would be for sale in 2025.

Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on a panel today at the World Economic Forum, Musk said the robots are currently doing “simple tasks” in Tesla factories, but believes “they’ll be doing more complex tasks and be deployed in an industrial environment” by the end of this year, before going on sale to the public in 2027.

Musk forecasts a future with “billions” of AI robots that “saturate all human needs.”

On a separate topic, Musk was bullish on regulatory approval for what Tesla calls Full Self-Driving technology in markets outside the US. “We hope to get supervised Full Self-Driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month, and then maybe a similar timing for China,” he said. Musk has said in the past that the pending regulatory approval for FSD in Europe is a key reason why Tesla’s sales in the region have been tanking.

Rani Molla21h

Waymo is now offering autonomous rides in Miami

Google subsidiary Waymo announced Thursday that it’s officially open for autonomous ride-hailing in Miami, expanding the company’s coverage area to six US cities. The company will be “inviting new riders on a rolling basis” to take rides across its 60-square-mile service area, which includes the Design District, Wynwood, Brickell, and Coral Gables. Waymo said it plans to expand to Miami International Airport “soon.”

Competitor Tesla currently operates a ride-hailing service with a safety monitor in the vehicle in Austin and the Bay Area.