Silicon Valley loses crown as largest US tech talent market

The New York metropolitan area had 394,300 tech workers in 2025, surpassing the Bay Area’s 375,730, according to real estate and investment firm CBRE’s 2026 "Scoring Tech Talent" report released on Tuesday.

It marked the first time in the report’s 13-year history that New York had a larger tech talent workforce than the Bay Area, long considered the heart of the U.S. technology industry, according to the New York Post.

New York added 30,640 tech workers between 2022 and 2025, an increase of 8.4%, while the Bay Area lost 23,900, or 6%, amid waves of layoffs at major technology companies.

"The story there is that there’s been cuts in the Bay Area, so the tech industry has contracted the size of the tech talent workforce, and the finance sector [in New York] has hired a lot of tech talent and a lot of AI workers," Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, told CNBC.

Professionals work in front of computers. Illustration from Pexels

CBRE defines tech talent as highly skilled workers across more than 20 technology-oriented occupations. These workers are employed not only by technology companies but also in sectors including financial services, healthcare and government.

New York’s growth partly reflects hiring by its financial sector, an early adopter of AI, as tech employment spreads beyond traditional technology companies.

AI is increasingly reshaping the broader labor market. The number of AI-skilled tech workers across the U.S. and Canada surged 45% year over year to 751,000 as of mid-2026, according to CBRE.

AI-related positions accounted for 31% of available U.S. tech jobs in June, up from 11% in mid-2022. In the Bay Area, the share jumped to 57% from 20% over the same period.

Despite losing its crown by workforce size, the Bay Area remains North America’s highest-ranked tech talent market overall.

CBRE’s broader scorecard, which evaluates 50 major U.S. and Canadian markets using factors including talent concentration, costs and research and development, ranked the Bay Area first, followed by Seattle and Toronto, with New York fourth.

The Bay Area has attracted 80% of U.S. AI venture funding since 2020 and is home to one-sixth of the country’s AI-specialty talent, according to CBRE. AI companies have also accounted for 30% of San Francisco office leasing activity since 2023.

"The Bay Area is likely to remain ... the central location for the AI industry and for innovation. But as we’ve seen during past cycles, as it tends to grow, that spreads out to all the key markets," Yasukochi said during a news conference Tuesday, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times.