Talent Intelligence Battle Card

US AI Talent Market

A one-page market brief built from the repository's verified 2021-2026 GitHub AI activity dataset. This view packages the existing report data into a decision surface: scale, momentum, and where to focus market coverage next.

Executive Signal
Bay Area
Still the structural center of gravity for US AI talent, with both the largest scale market and a second premium node in San Jose.
Austin
Best expansion bet if you want both growth and engagement intensity, not just more users.
Market Snapshot

Where the signal is strongest

The US is the largest national cohort in the located slice, but metro analysis still comes from a filtered city-resolved base. Use this as a market map, not an absolute labor census.

2.58M
global AI-active users in the full dataset
~16%
US share of users with parseable locations
US AI-active users
51,913
largest single-country cohort in the located slice
Estimated true US total
~385K
if the US mirrors the 13.5% global profile-fill rate
Location normalization success
92.4%
share of users with a location string resolved to at least country
City-level market base
235,054
users available for city and metro analysis
Scale Markets

Top US metros by all-time AI users

These are cumulative unique users across the full 64-month dataset. The bar at right is a relative share indicator against the top metro in the set.

# Metro Users Avg Score Share
1 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 5,172 365.78
2 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ 3,309 109.56
3 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 2,603 198.13
4 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 2,420 106.97
5 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 1,916 103.53
6 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1,710 293.08
7 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN 1,417 207.05
8 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 1,221 276.78
Actionable Readout

What to do with this

Scale market

The Bay Area remains the anchor market. San Francisco alone accounts for roughly 10% of located US AI users, with San Jose adding a second high-intensity node.

Momentum market

Raleigh-Durham has the fastest percentage expansion, while Dallas and Denver combine large absolute gains with sustained growth.

Premium market

Austin is the clearest high-intensity expansion market: not just more users, but the strongest 2025+ average score among top-growth metros.

Operating constraint

City and metro views are built from the 235,054 users with city-level resolution, so this is a directional market map rather than a full census of AI labor supply.

Coverage playbook

  • Use Bay Area and Seattle for scale hiring and competitor sensing.
  • Use Austin and Atlanta when you want higher-intensity ecosystems with room to gain share.
  • Build early pipeline in Raleigh-Durham, Dallas, and Denver before req pressure spikes.
Momentum Markets

Fastest-growing metros since 2025

Growth is measured as the change in average monthly active AI users between 2024 and 2025+ in the production historical data.

Metro Growth % User Gain Avg Score
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area +64.7% +17.47 76.32
Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex +49.3% +27.08 90.95
Portland, Oregon Area +46.1% +13.25 75.60
Denver Metropolitan Area +45.4% +25.13 53.92
Miami-Fort Lauderdale Area +45.1% +14.27 116.91
Austin, Texas Area +36.4% +27.62 519.84
Greater Seattle Area +32.7% +50.95 271.69
Greater Chicago Area +31.6% +27.48 222.62
Source: repository article metrics in docs/talent_intelligence_article.md, covering January 2021 through March 2026 after bot cleanup. City and metro analysis uses the city-resolved subset of users and should be interpreted as directional talent intelligence rather than a complete census.