Good morning. New York has overtaken the San Francisco Bay Area as North America’s largest tech-talent workforce by headcount, and Wall Street’s growing demand for AI talent is helping reshape the market—though San Francisco isn’t ceding its crown entirely.
The finding comes from CBRE’s “Scoring Tech Talent 2026” report. New York Metro’s tech-talent workforce grew by 30,640 to 394,300 between 2022 and 2025, while the San Francisco Bay Area’s contracted by 23,900 to 375,730—marking the first time New York has led by headcount in the report’s 13-year history.
The shift reflects New York’s more diversified tech economy. While 61% of San Francisco’s tech talent works directly in high-tech companies, New York’s tech workforce is spread more broadly across industries, including financial services.
Across the U.S. and Canada, the number of tech-talent workers with AI skills rose 45% year over year to 751,000 as of mid-2026. The San Francisco Bay Area still leads in raw AI-specialist numbers and has a higher concentration of AI job postings overall (26%, versus 17% in New York).
But when it comes to financial services specifically, New York and Dallas-Fort Worth tied for the highest concentration of AI-specialty talent among major markets, at 20% each, ahead of Toronto (19%) and Chicago (16%). Financial firms are increasingly competing with technology companies for workers who can put AI into production inside highly regulated businesses.
