AI venture funding is concentrated in a small number of cities. According to the Crunchbase and HumanX AI funding report, Bay Area startups raised about 60% of global AI venture funding in 2025, roughly $126 billion. In the UK, London accounted for 68% of AI funding rounds tracked by HSBC Innovation Banking and Dealroom in the first half of 2025.
Funding shows where capital lands. Hiring shows which local companies are turning that capital into teams. Landbase’s AI Startup Index ranks the AI startups adding headcount fastest overall, and this series repeats the same analysis city by city.
This page compares ten city rankings, each listing the ten venture-backed AI startups headquartered in that city with the highest 12-month headcount growth in Landbase data, verified against public funding and growth evidence.
How the city rankings were built
Each city ranking used the same method:
- Headquartered in the city or its core metro area, confirmed against company or press sources
- AI-native, meaning AI is the core of the product
- Venture-backed, with at least one disclosed institutional round
- Positive 12-month headcount growth in Landbase data, used as the ranking order, with a minimum of about 30 employees to limit noise from very small teams
Headcount growth is calculated from professional-profile data and can differ from company-reported figures. Funding and growth evidence in each city post comes from company announcements and press coverage. Funding is treated as one of several company buying signals rather than proof of growth on its own.
The fastest-growing AI startup in each city
- San Francisco: OpenArt (+1,488%)
- London: Throxy (+842%)
- New York: Prosper AI (+700%)
- Boston: Blitzy (+526%)
- Paris: Alta Ares (+461%)
- Austin: NODA AI (+386%)
- Tel Aviv: ZyG (+283%)
- Berlin: n8n (+279%)
- Seattle: Gradial (+217%)
- Toronto: Mycroft (+113%)
The cities are ordered by the growth rate of their top company. That order mostly reflects starting team size: the highest percentages belong to companies that were small a year ago.
San Francisco
San Francisco produced the highest growth rates in the series. Its list is dominated by applied AI companies selling into construction, insurance, IT services, accounting and customer research, with Cognition as the only frontier-scale company.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- OpenArt (+1,488%): AI creative and video platform
- Treeline (+950%): AI-powered IT services
- Bobyard (+864%): construction AI
Read the full ranking: San Francisco AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
London
London’s fastest growers are mostly early-stage. Several raised seed rounds in the past year, and the list spans outbound sales, recruiting agents, lending, enterprise IT and AI compute infrastructure.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Throxy (+842%): AI outbound sales
- Jack & Jill (+658%): AI recruiting agents
- Nscale (+542%): AI compute infrastructure
Read the full ranking: London AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
New York
New York’s list leans toward healthcare and finance. Three companies automate healthcare administration and three sell into accounting, fund administration or ERP, alongside AI model routing (OpenRouter) and AI search visibility (Profound).
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Prosper AI (+700%): healthcare voice AI agents
- OpenRouter (+522%): AI model routing and inference marketplace
- Profound (+458%): AI search visibility for marketers
Read the full ranking: New York AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Boston
Boston combines enterprise software engineering with life sciences and healthcare. Five of its ten companies work on clinical, hospital or health data problems, and two (Blitzy and Code Metal) build AI coding tools.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Blitzy (+526%): enterprise autonomous software development
- 7AI (+227%): agentic security operations
- Code Metal (+200%): verified AI code translation
Read the full ranking: Boston AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Paris
Paris is led by defense. Its two fastest-growing companies build counter-drone and military autonomy systems, followed by healthcare voice AI and Mistral, which closed one of the largest equity rounds in European technology.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Alta Ares (+461%): AI air defense and counter-drone systems
- Harmattan AI (+440%): defense autonomy and drone systems
- Vocca (+283%): healthcare voice AI
Read the full ranking: Paris AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Austin
Austin has the strongest defense and hardware profile in the series, with autonomy software, counter-drone systems, autonomous vessels and photonic chips. Healthcare AI and restaurant voice agents round out the list.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- NODA AI (+386%): defense autonomy orchestration
- Allen Control Systems (+366%): autonomous counter-drone weapon systems
- Loman AI (+225%): voice AI for restaurants
Read the full ranking: Austin AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv’s list mixes commerce, construction and go-to-market software with the security and defense companies the city is known for.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- ZyG (+283%): agentic e-commerce operating system
- Kela Technologies (+262%): defense AI and command-and-control
- Materialspace (+200%): AI for construction planning and procurement
Read the full ranking: Tel Aviv AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Berlin
Berlin is led by infrastructure and enterprise AI. Workflow automation, AI search analytics, enterprise AI platforms and vector search sit beside vertical tools for nursing, distribution and fresh food retail.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- n8n (+279%): AI workflow automation and agents
- Peec AI (+270%): AI search visibility analytics
- Langdock (+204%): enterprise AI platform
Read the full ranking: Berlin AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Seattle
Seattle’s list centers on enterprise software: marketing operations agents, offensive and defensive security, agent infrastructure and supply chain. Growth rates are lower than in San Francisco or New York.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Gradial (+217%): AI agents for enterprise marketing operations
- XBOW (+216%): autonomous offensive security
- CopilotKit (+188%): AI agent frontend infrastructure
Read the full ranking: Seattle AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
Toronto
Toronto has the lowest growth rates in the series, and several companies have not announced a round since 2024. Waabi and Cohere are the two large, late-stage companies on the list.
Top three by 12-month headcount growth:
- Mycroft (+113%): AI security and compliance
- Consio (+65%): AI voice agents for ecommerce
- Waabi (+63%): physical AI and autonomous trucking
Read the full ranking: Toronto AI Startups Hiring Fastest in 2026.
What the city rankings show
First, growth rates fall off sharply outside the largest hubs. The top company in San Francisco grew headcount by nearly 1,500%, New York and London leaders grew by 700% to 850%, and the fastest-growing company in Toronto grew by just over 110%.
Second, each city has a recognizable specialty. Defense and autonomy lead in Paris and Austin and appear in Tel Aviv and Boston. Healthcare administration and clinical AI are concentrated in New York and Boston. Berlin and Paris both have strong enterprise AI platform and infrastructure companies, including n8n, Langdock, Dust and Mistral.
Third, the same categories appear across cities. AI-native finance and accounting tools appear in San Francisco, New York, London and Paris, and AI agents for customer conversations and sales appear in eight of the ten lists. Teams comparing categories can use the category rankings, such as AI fintech startups hiring fastest and healthcare AI startups hiring fastest.
For GTM teams, city is useful as a territory filter on top of growth. A company that is hiring quickly in a market where the team already sells is easier to reach, and combining location with hiring, funding and technology data enrichment signals gives a sharper target list than any one of them alone.
How Landbase supports AI startup research by city
Every ranking in this series was built with Landbase. A natural-language search identified venture-backed AI startups headquartered in each city, an enrichment step added founding year, headquarters city, and 12-month headcount change, and the results were filtered and sorted into structured datasets.
Landbase’s web and CLI interfaces access the same account, datasets, and saved work.
For more complex requirements, the Advanced Dataset Creator supports filters, calculations, and custom output fields.
Landbase’s data infrastructure includes more than 800 million contacts and more than 40 million companies across more than 1,500 fields, with enrichment from more than 20 providers.
A territory workflow could, for example, find AI startups headquartered in New York or Boston that raised a Series A or later in the past year, more than doubled headcount, sell into healthcare, and recently hired a head of revenue operations.
The Landbase CLI setup supports these workflows from a standard terminal and from AI coding environments including Claude Code and Codex.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which cities are covered in the AI Startup Index city rankings?
The series covers San Francisco, New York, London, Boston, Paris, Austin, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Seattle, and Toronto. Each city has its own ranking of ten AI startups headquartered there.
Which city had the fastest-growing AI startup?
San Francisco. OpenArt, an AI creative and video platform, recorded the highest 12-month headcount growth in the series at nearly 1,500%, from a small starting team.
Why do growth rates differ so much between cities?
The largest percentages come from companies that were small a year ago and raised large rounds, which is most common in San Francisco, New York, and London. Cities with older or more established companies, such as Toronto, show lower percentage growth.
Does a city ranking show every fast-growing AI startup in that city?
No. Each list is limited to venture-backed, AI-native companies with a confirmed local headquarters and enough public funding evidence to verify. Companies with unclear headquarters, very small teams, or unverified funding were left out.
How can GTM teams find fast-growing AI startups in a specific city?
Teams can start with a location and category, then filter by headcount growth, funding stage, recent rounds, technology usage, and hiring activity. Landbase can combine these criteria into reusable datasets and return company and contact information through web and CLI workflows.
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