Good news for those of us still in Silicon Valley. The New York Times reports that the locus of AI currently sits in the Bay Area, which “has ruled the technology industry for decades, from early days of personal computers to the social media boom.” Researchers from the Brookings Institute predict that AI (like other technologies before it) will grow even stronger here. The key points:

• Clustering. “Generative A.I. could magnify a ‘winner take most’ geography for jobs,” and “[t]his exciting new technology may drive more clustering.”
• Location & Numbers. “The winners, so far, are San Francisco and San Jose.” AI jobs have been plentiful: 2,200 posted over the last year across 380 metro areas, but a quarter of those jobs have been concentrated in the Bay Area.
• Other Hubs? Researchers expect the Bay Area’s hold on AI jobs to grow stronger, more so than any other hub, including Austin or Miami.
• AI players. “In addition to industry giants like Google and Meta, the nine most valuable start-ups in generative A.I. are based in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, including OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, InflectionAI, Databricks and Cerebras, according to PitchBook.”