New York has overtaken the San Francisco Bay Area as the largest New York tech talent market, marking the first time the city has held the top position in CBRE’s 13-year analysis of technology employment across the United States and Canada. The New York metropolitan area had 394,300 tech talent jobs in 2025, compared with 375,730 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The shift reflects a broader transformation in the technology workforce. While San Francisco remains the leading market for artificial intelligence talent, New York has benefited from the growing demand for technology professionals across industries, particularly financial services. At the same time, layoffs and workforce reductions have reduced the size of the Bay Area’s broader tech workforce.
CBRE’s 2026 Scoring Tech Talent report examines 75 metropolitan markets in the United States and Canada, measuring the concentration and development of highly skilled technology workers across more than 20 technology-oriented occupations. The analysis includes technology professionals working outside the traditional technology sector, making the results particularly relevant to financial services, professional services and other office-based industries.
The report points to an increasingly important distinction between the overall technology workforce and the specialized AI workforce. New York now has the larger overall pool of tech talent, but San Francisco continues to dominate the AI segment.
New York Tech Talent Market Gains as San Francisco Workforce Contracts
The change in rankings is closely connected to the different trajectories of the two metropolitan economies.
San Francisco has experienced significant technology workforce reductions in recent years, while New York has continued adding technology professionals in industries that traditionally have not been classified as technology companies. Financial institutions, in particular, have increased their demand for technical expertise as AI and other digital technologies become more deeply integrated into their operations.
That diversification matters because CBRE’s definition of tech talent is based on occupation rather than employer. A software developer working for a financial company, for example, is part of the technology talent workforce even though the employer is not classified as a technology company.
This approach helps explain why New York can surpass San Francisco in total tech talent even while the Bay Area retains a much stronger identity as a technology hub.
The numbers also show how quickly the workforce is being reorganized around artificial intelligence. Across the United States and Canada, AI-related tech roles increased 45% over the past year. By June 2026, the combined AI-related workforce in the two countries had reached approximately 751,000 workers.
New York and San Francisco each added more than 20,000 AI-specific jobs since mid-2025. These figures include both newly created positions and existing technology workers whose roles have evolved to incorporate AI-related skills.
For employers, the distinction between hiring and reskilling is becoming increasingly important. The expansion of AI does not necessarily mean that every AI-related worker represents a newly created position. Some of the growth reflects existing employees acquiring skills needed to develop, implement or manage AI systems.
The broader U.S. labor market already includes a large range of computer and mathematical occupations, including software developers, programmers, systems administrators, analysts and other specialized roles. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational data provides a broader framework for understanding the range of technology-related professions that feed into this workforce.
AI Keeps San Francisco Ahead in Specialized Talent
New York may have captured the overall technology talent lead, but San Francisco remains the dominant U.S. market for AI-specific workers.
CBRE found that 37% of AI jobs in the United States are concentrated in four major markets: the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. San Francisco’s position is reinforced by its established technology ecosystem and its concentration of companies developing artificial intelligence products and infrastructure.
New York’s strength is different. Its AI workforce is increasingly connected to financial services and other large office-based industries where companies are adopting AI to improve existing operations and develop new capabilities.
The shift therefore does not represent the disappearance of San Francisco’s technology advantage. Instead, it illustrates how the definition of a technology market is changing as AI becomes embedded across the wider economy.
The Canadian market shows an even stronger concentration. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver account for about 60% of AI jobs in Canada, according to the CBRE analysis. This concentration reflects the importance of major metropolitan labor markets in attracting specialized technology workers and supporting companies that depend on those skills.
The growing importance of AI is also visible in employment data beyond CBRE’s market analysis. Canada’s official Statistics Canada labour-force data by occupation tracks the broader occupational categories that make up the country’s technology workforce.
For companies competing for specialized workers, the concentration of AI talent creates an important advantage for established technology centers. Universities, venture capital, technology companies and existing pools of experienced workers can reinforce one another, making the strongest markets difficult to displace even when employment patterns change.
That dynamic helps explain why San Francisco continues to lead in AI despite losing the overall tech-talent ranking to New York.
AI Office Demand Is Reshaping San Francisco, New York and Other Tech Hubs
The changing technology workforce is also affecting commercial real estate. AI companies are emerging as an increasingly important source of office demand at a time when the broader technology sector is still adapting to the post-pandemic shift toward remote and hybrid work.
San Francisco provides the clearest example. AI companies accounted for 58% of all office leasing in the market during the first half of 2026, according to CBRE. Since 2023, AI-related companies have represented about 30% of leasing activity in the market, totaling roughly 10 million square feet.
The trend contrasts with the remote-work behavior that reshaped the Bay Area office market after the pandemic. While many technology companies reduced office footprints or adopted hybrid arrangements, AI companies have generally developed a stronger preference for in-person collaboration.
That preference is significant for commercial real estate because companies that require employees to work together more frequently need physical environments capable of supporting larger teams and collaborative work. As AI companies grow, their hiring patterns can therefore translate directly into demand for office space.
San Francisco is not alone. CBRE identifies Manhattan, Boston and Seattle among the markets where AI-related leasing activity is concentrated. The connection between specialized talent and office demand is becoming increasingly visible as companies locate teams close to the workers they need.
The relationship also creates a feedback loop. Strong concentrations of skilled workers can attract companies, while new companies and investment can create additional demand for specialized talent. As those companies expand, they can increase demand for office space, supporting the broader commercial real estate ecosystem.
The CBRE 2026 technology talent analysis describes this relationship as AI-related employment continues to cluster in major North American technology centers.
The question for office markets is whether this expansion will remain strong enough to offset the longer-term possibility that AI could reduce employment in some occupations. So far, the evidence described in the report points more toward workforce transformation than broad elimination. AI is changing existing jobs, creating specialized roles and increasing demand for workers capable of implementing the technology.
New York’s rise illustrates that transformation particularly well. Its position at the top of the overall tech talent workforce is not the result of becoming another Silicon Valley overnight. It reflects the growing importance of technology skills across sectors, especially finance, and the ability of large metropolitan economies to absorb and redeploy specialized workers.
The city’s expanding AI and technology ecosystem is also being reinforced by workforce-development initiatives. New York City has announced programs designed to expand access to AI and emerging-technology education, including new pathways through the City University of New York. The NYC AI degree pathway initiative reflects the broader competition among major cities to develop the workforce needed for an increasingly AI-driven economy.
For the commercial real estate sector, the implications are already visible. AI is creating new demand in markets that have historically depended on technology workers, while also strengthening the role of technology talent in industries such as finance. The result is a reshaping of the relationship between employment, innovation and office space across North America’s major business centers.
