Only a handful of European cities host a sizable population of highly-coveted artificial intelligence (AI) engineers, leaving most of the continent scrambling to catch up. 

London, the birthplace of Alan Turing, who is considered one of the founding figures of modern computer science and AI, is home to about 24,600 AI engineers, according to figures from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The city’s AI cluster features major employers in the AI space of the likes of Google DeepMind and a flourishing community of AI start-ups that can find in the city both the capital and the talent they need to scale-up. 

“There are a number of great universities and apprenticeships here in the UK that allow us to bring some of the best talent into the company and into our partner ecosystem,” Vishal Marria, the company’s CEO of Quantexa, a UK decision intelligence firm, told fDi after the unveiling a $105m hub for research and development in AI solutions in the UK capital in July. 

Beyond London, Paris has the second largest population of AI engineers with 7624, followed by Zurich with 5800. 

But the European city with the highest concentration of AI engineers relative to the overall population of tech engineers is Dublin, where almost two in 10 (17%) software engineers have a specialisation in AI. 

Similarly to London, “one factor driving the outlier concentration in Dublin is that the city has proved a friendly base for tech giants”, argues the Sequoia report, which was published in June. “Meta, Google and Microsoft — among the top five companies hiring AI talent globally — have built a considerable presence here, taking advantage of Ireland’s attractive tax regime for research and development.”

If both the EU and other major European powerhouses like the UK have big AI ambitions, the overall level of AI talent available is still relatively low. Across the whole of Europe, only 1.4% of the population of software engineers has a specialisation in AI, with that percentage growing to 7% for engineers with “some” AI experience, according to Sequoia figures. These figures are even lower in the US and China, where only 1.1% and 0.5%, respectively, of all software engineers have an AI specialisation, Sequoia figures show. 

“With its wealth of talent, Europe is positioning itself as a leader in the accelerating world of AI,” reads the report. “While talent is amassing at the tech giants, these talent pools become ‘aircraft carriers’ as entrepreneurial employees inevitably depart to start their own companies, generating yet more demand for AI skills. With assertive policy incentives in the pipeline, anyone with a stake in AI is keeping their eyes on the region.”