San Francisco has as many AI startups as the entire EU
Published 27 September 2026
On 24 September 2026 Patrick Collison posted a chart of monthly payment volume of AI businesses on Stripe by headquarters country: the US line climbs steeply from 2023 and the EU line barely leaves the floor (eudata.vercel.app). We counted the same gap in funding, by city and by country, in our copy of Crunchbase.
AI startup statistics 2026: San Francisco vs the EU
- San Francisco has 4,067 funded AI startups. The 27 EU countries have 4,147 combined.
- San Francisco's AI startups raised $529.5 billion, 8.9 times the $59.8 billion raised by AI startups in the EU.
- Since the start of 2023, 2,347 funded AI startups were founded in San Francisco and 1,198 in the EU.
- 25 San Francisco AI startups have raised $1 billion or more. In the EU, 12 have.
- Palo Alto alone, with 565 AI startups, raised $103.5 billion, 1.7 times the EU total.
One city has 98% as many AI startups as 27 countries
San Francisco has 4,067 funded AI startups and the EU has 4,147, so the city has 98% as many as the whole bloc. Source: FundingWatcher, September 2026. Germany has the most in the EU with 911, then France with 665, Spain with 381, the Netherlands with 318 and Italy with 271.
| Place | AI startups | Funding raised |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 4,067 | $529.5B |
| New York | 2,145 | $71.9B |
| London | 1,556 | $32.1B |
| EU, 27 countries | 4,147 | $59.8B |
| Germany | 911 | $17.8B |
| France | 665 | $17.0B |
| Paris | 414 | $16.1B |
San Francisco's AI startups raised 8.9 times as much as the EU's
The four largest San Francisco AI startups by funding are OpenAI ($208.1 billion), Anthropic ($128.7 billion), Databricks ($32.2 billion) and Scale ($15.9 billion). OpenAI alone raised 3.5 times the EU total.
The ten largest in the EU: Mistral AI ($7.5 billion), Helsing ($3.3 billion), Celonis ($2.4 billion), Quantum Systems ($2.0 billion), NEURA Robotics ($1.7 billion), Alan ($1.4 billion), Kpler ($1.2 billion), Odoo ($1.2 billion), Domyn ($1.2 billion) and Nebius AI ($1.0 billion).
San Francisco started twice as many AI startups as the EU since 2023
Of the funded AI startups founded in 2023 or later, 2,347 are in San Francisco and 1,198 in the EU.
Method
We read all 1,723,352 organizations in our copy of Crunchbase on 27 September 2026. Funding rounds in it run to September 2026.
- 299,485 have a funding total or at least one funding round.
- 35,772 of those are in Crunchbase's Artificial Intelligence (AI) category group.
- 35,705 are for-profit.
- 34,506 were founded in 2000 or later.
- 34,214 are not public (last round not a post-IPO round). This drops Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, SAP and Siemens, among others.
- 34,211 after removing duplicate records.
- 33,681 list a headquarters country.
A startup counts for a city or country by the headquarters location on its Crunchbase record. San Francisco means the city itself, not the Bay Area. The EU means the 27 member states in September 2026, so the UK and Switzerland are outside it. Funding is the total Crunchbase lists for each company, which includes debt and secondary rounds where Crunchbase records them. Startups whose rounds have no disclosed amount count towards the startup numbers with zero funding.
Crunchbase is a US company, and its coverage of small European startups is thinner than of US ones. The counts are what Crunchbase lists, not a census. Whether a startup counts as AI is Crunchbase's category, and a company whose record does not carry the tag is missing from both sides.
Data
The files below are under CC BY 4.0.
- countries.csv, AI startups and funding by headquarters country
- cities.csv, every city with 5 or more AI startups
- startups.csv, every San Francisco and EU AI startup with city, founding year, funding and last round
- README.md and METHOD.md