East Asian Cities Threaten US AI Dominance, According to The Observer’s AI Cities Index

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 20, 2026--

The Observer has released its inaugural AI Cities Index: a first-of-its-kind report identifying which cities are leading the global AI race.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261020755794/en/

The new ranking has scored 57 cities across 36 countries based on levels of AI investment (assessing public, private and procedural investments in AI), innovation (capturing breakthroughs in technology that are indicative of greater capacity for AI in the future) and implementation (the availability of the institutions, systems and practitioners needed to put AI to work).

While most analysis of global AI development takes a national lens, this report goes deeper to understand which metropolitan hubs are truly driving the sector’s growth. The findings build on the Global AI Index which has been benchmarking AI impact at a national level for seven years.

TAKEAWAY 1: East Asian cities square up to US for AI crown

San Francisco and New York are named as the world’s leading cities for AI - taking the top two spots in the Index overall. San Francisco outranks other major cities for innovation, investment and its ability to successfully integrate AI innovations into society, with New York also receiving top scores across the board. However, the research shows that East Asian cities are snapping at America’s heels.

While US cities still dominate when it comes to attracting capital, East Asian hubs are outperforming some of their US counterparts when it comes to AI implementation, infrastructure and the strength of their operating environments. According to the ranking, 60% of the world’s leading AI cities are in East and Southeast Asia: Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing.

On innovation, it’s a straight fight between Chinese cities and US tech hubs: San Francisco tops the ranking, followed by Beijing in second, New York in third and Shenzhen in fourth place.

According to wider research, the performance gap between Chinese and American AI models has narrowed to just 2.7%, down from as much as 31.6% in 2023. This is despite the US producing more frontier models overall (50 in 2025, compared to China’s 30; although China’s count doubled year-on-year ).

TAKEAWAY 2: Seoul emerges as AI powerhouse

Seoul emerges as a standout city outside the US when it comes to AI. The South Korean capital ranks first in the world for AI implementation: the Index's measure of how far a city has built the infrastructure, institutions and systems needed to put AI to work across business, government, education and communities.

The city has stood up the Seoul AI Innovation Committee to support SMEs that lack the budget to fund in-house AI expertise or infrastructure. And much of South Korea’s chip design and manufacturing is concentrated in the capital: Seoul is home to approximately 200 semiconductor headquarters, including world-leading chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix, which both top $1tn in market capitalisation.

Tokyo ranks third and Singapore fifth in the implementation table, with Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing also featuring in the global top ten. While cities like Seoul, Singapore and Beijing have built the institutional infrastructure required to run AI through the public sector at scale, reports from San Francisco and New York point to adoption that remains pilot-scale and fragmented.

In contrast, cities known for their tech prowess and strong state-backing, including Tel Aviv, and Dubai, fail to rank in the top ten cities when it comes to AI implementation.

TAKEAWAY 3: East Asia beats US at rolling out AI initiatives

The Index also reveals a split in the nature of global AI leadership. While US cities in the ranking reflect an ecosystem built to produce breakthroughs and monetise speculative bets, East and Southeast Asian cities are taking existing AI capability and pushing it into government services, factories and small businesses. In the market, this is evidenced by state-led initiatives like Beijing’s national AI fund, Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0, Japan’s METI and Seoul’s Stargate initiative.

In East Asia, AI ecosystems also appear more distributed. China has three cities in the global top ten - Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai - compared to a US ecosystem hyperconcentrated in San Francisco.

Patricia Clarke, The Observer’s Technology Editor said:

“This is the first time anyone has mapped AI’s ever-expanding reach beyond the national level.

“Unsurprisingly, San Francisco defends its reputation as the capital of technology and innovation. But East Asia’s strength reflects the growing power of state-built and research-led ecosystems. Seoul’s thriving AI economy, in particular, is being built on sustained top-down investment in AI research, infrastructure and adoption.

“What this Index makes clear is that the map of AI power is no longer a map of countries. It’s redrawing itself around cities. Some of tomorrow’s most important AI decisions may not be made in Washington or Beijing, but in Seoul, Shenzhen and a handful of other emerging hubs.”

The full AI Cities Index is available via this link.

Notes to Editors

About The Observer

The Observer is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, founded in 1791. Acquired by Tortoise Media in April 2025 from Guardian Media Group, it operates under editor-in-chief James Harding as an independent title combining its historic print heritage with Tortoise's slow-journalism approach to news and analysis.

Methodology

The AI Cities Index is a composite Index built from 50 indicators drawn from quantitative sources and qualitative fieldwork, covering 57 cities worldwide. The Index design, methodology and indicator selection was devised by The Observer’s AI Index team with extensive consultation with experts, including an advisory panel of technical and subject matter experts.

The Index takes the same underlying conception of AI capacity as the Global AI Index, but offers a more granular view of AI capacity within countries. We define a city’s AI capacity as its demonstrated ability to originate, build, finance and absorb artificial intelligence.

It is intended to be iterated and improved annually.

The 50 indicators that comprise the AI Cities Index have been selected because they:

Our indicators are grouped by associative themes around three main pillars:

The full methodology is available here.

The Observer AI Cities Index US vs Asia

The Observer AI Cities Index Top Ten Cities 2026

NEW YORK (AP) — The Philadelphia Eagles are not being disciplined for how they handled quarterback Jalen Hurts’ blood clots, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday because conversations between the league and team were to remain private.

Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, offered a passionate defense of how the Eagles treated Hurts, following a statement from the league that said officials had been in contact with Philadelphia's medical personnel and the Cleveland Clinic in London throughout the process.

“I have complete confidence in the Eagles’ medical staff and their handling of this situation, and I would characterize their work as very conservative, very patient-focused and appropriately guarded at every step,” Sills said at the league's annual fall meeting. “I don’t think you can take that outcome and say there was something flawed about the process. Sometimes in medicine, we do all the right things and diseases progress and other things develop. ...

“In this case, everyone was incredibly conservative and incredibly vigilant and was very quick to make diagnoses of these conditions that might not have been diagnosed in a nonathlete.”

Hurts is on injured reserve and expected to miss the rest of the season after a blood clot in his left calf traveled to his lungs. The Eagles and agent Nicole Lynn said Monday that Hurts has deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary embolisms.

NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller took issue with “uninformed speculation” reported Monday about Hurts' movements last weekend.

“Jalen Hurts returned to the hotel, slept for a period of time and went to the stadium,” Miller said, estimating that Hurts slept for around seven or eight hours. “Both talking to the Eagles’ staff and making sure from people on the ground, tracking the case, talking to the independent hospital and doctors involved that we have, I think, a complete understanding of the course of events.”

Sills said the league and the players' union study and track blood clots annually. He declined to go into specifics about Hurts' condition, citing patient privacy, and reiterated multiple times that treating a blood clot involves looking at multiple factors.

Dr. Caron Rockman, a vascular surgeon for roughly 30 years, said based on what she has read, there's no evidence the Eagles acted improperly while dealing with what she called not a textbook issue.

“It’s a judgment call,” said Rockman, who is currently a chair at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. “I think it’s really a case-by-case basis. In my personal opinion, superficial vein thrombosis is not a (disqualification) to fly.”

Hurts' treatment moving forward involves blood thinners, and he will not be allowed to participate in any football activities until he is off them.

Hurts played in London against Jacksonville on Oct. 11, three days after informing medical staff of the injury after practice. He was initially diagnosed by specialists in London with a left calf superficial vein thrombosis.

“I think there was incredible vigilance, there was conservative care, state-of-the-art imaging that was done in London,” Sills said. “And, as far as the timing and the decision-making, I have great confidence in that and believe that everyone acted with an abundance of caution.”

Sills in his opening statement that lasted more than five minutes said all decisions are made with medicine over football.

“The notion that there are external factors or that any of our physicians would put a player in harm’s way — that’s nonsense,” Sills said.

AP Sports Writer David Brandt in Phoenix contributed to this report.

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) passes the ball during an NFL football game against Jacksonville Jaguars in London, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)