Singapore Named World's Top AI City in Counterpoint Research's 2025 AI City Index
- Singapore ranked first globally in Counterpoint Research’s 2025 Global AI Cities Index, with Seoul, Beijing, Dubai and San Francisco rounding out the top five cities.
- Microsoft and Google were the biggest vendors driving AI-city activity, focusing on datacenter development, AI training programs and continued global expansion. Huawei was notable in driving AI initiatives in the telco space with 5G-A technology.
- Geopolitical themes crept into regional dynamics with North America still leading and China quickly catching up. Regulatory hurdles have impeded AI development in Europe.
- Critical verticals saw NVIDIA’s supercomputer plant lift Dallas to the top spot in supercomputing, ahead of Beijing.
- Conversely, Shenzhen ranked #1 in robotics – ahead of Boston – as strong government initiatives helped spur sector innovation.
- Bengaluru, Riyadh, Hangzhou, and São Paulo are among the fastest growing AI cities in the world.
Seoul, Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, San Diego, Hong Kong, London, New Delhi, Taipei, Tokyo – July 31, 2025
Singapore has been ranked the world’s top AI city in Counterpoint Research’s recently published 2025 Global AI Cities Index – a study on the adoption of AI in the largest 100 metropolitan areas around the world. According to the report, Singapore is followed by Seoul, Beijing, Dubai, and San Francisco to round out the top five. Counterpoint Research analyzed over 5,000 initiatives in the private and public sectors, strength of communications infrastructure, university output, and strength of the startup ecosystem among other factors.
*Scoring measures the development of AI in each city; maximum score 100.
Regional Highlights
Singapore came out on top as the city has enacted a variety of government initiatives through organizations like AI Singapore, which has created a vibrant startup ecosystem and, more importantly, a strong collaborative alliance between the public and private sectors in industries such as healthcare, transportation and telecommunications. Seoul was not far behind as the Seoul Metropolitan Government has been actively implementing AI in verticals such as healthcare and education while companies such as SK Telecom and Naver are pushing the envelope in terms of AI service innovation. Beijing ranked third in the study. The city has announced formal AI education training for all primary and secondary school students starting in 2025. China Unicom and Huawei have also implemented several 5G + AI initiatives in Beijing.
At the regional level, North America is still in the lead in terms of AI city development by a decent margin, but China is catching up. Commenting on the growth of AI cities in China, Research Director Marc Einstein said, "AI city development in China is no longer limited to the biggest cities. Places like Wuhan, Chengdu, and Suzhou are also embracing AI quickly. Investments, especially in supercomputing are impressive and the gap between North America and China will certainly narrow from next year onwards." Einstein added that Europe only had about half of the activity level as North America due to a more difficult regulatory environment. He also said the Middle East is the region to watch going forward.
Einstein also noted some surprises in the study. For example, Dubai actually outscored San Francisco as the government is making massive investments in AI across all sectors of the economy from energy to media production. “The city has an AI strategist in every government department. All teachers are now being given AI training, and they have the ‘One Prompter’ program to train one million AI engineers. They are clearly investing in the future and Abu Dhabi is not far behind," Einstein said.
Riyadh, the seat of Saudi Arabia's $100-billion AI investment initiative; Bengaluru, India's Silicon Valley; and Hangzhou, the Chinese birthplace of DeepSeek, are also important cities to watch out for in this latent AI-city race.
Key AI, Cloud & Data Infrastructure Vendor Ecosystem Enabling AI Cities
Number of AI City-influencing Events by Global Tech Vendor, 2025
Note: The number at the top of the bar chart represents the total number of AI City-influencing events recorded during the study per vendor.
Global Tech Vendors also play an important role in AI city development. In the 2025 AI City Index report, Microsoft emerged as the most active vendor as the company expanded its AI datacenter footprint significantly, engaged in several AI training initiatives, and set up new AI innovation hubs in cities like London and Sydney. Other tech giants, such as Google and Amazon, with a global footprint and massive software, cloud, and AI technology influence, were not far behind as they also expanded their AI datacenter footprints and partnered with governments, universities, and enterprises in several verticals. NVIDIA was particularly active in the supercomputing space, launching a new facility in Copenhagen and partnering with telcos, such as du in Dubai and FastWeb in Milan. NVIDIA has also been pushing for partnerships to accelerate local Sovereign AI initiatives.
Key Telco Ecosystem Catalyzing AI Cities Roll Out
Telco infrastructure plays an important role in AI City development, both on the fixed and wireless fronts. Beijing Telecom is deploying 10G fiber throughout the city to enable AI-driven applications while in Boston, Verizon is also increasing capacity to handle bigger AI workloads. AI is starting to play a bigger role in mobile network management as Airtel has been blocking one million spammers daily in Delhi and in Riyadh STC has been using AI to automate 5G network traffic during the Riyadh Season festival. Companies like Singapore'sSingtel are starting to offer new products like GPU-as-a-Service. In Osaka, SoftBank and KDDI are investing heavily in AI datacenters and in Toronto, Rogers is using 5G to control its CCTV security cameras.
About Counterpoint Research
Counterpoint Research is a global market research firm specializing in products across the technology ecosystem. We advise a diverse range of clients – from smartphone OEMs to chipmakers and channel players to Big Tech – through our offices located in the world's major innovation hubs, manufacturing clusters and commercial centers. Our analyst team, led by seasoned experts, engages with stakeholders across the enterprise – from the C-suite to professionals in strategy, analyst relations (AR), market intelligence (MI), business intelligence (BI), product and marketing – to deliver services spanning market data, industry thought leadership and consulting. Our core areas of coverage include AI, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Displays, eSIM, IoT, Location Platforms, Macroeconomics, Manufacturing, Networks and Infrastructure, Semiconductors, Smartphones and Wearables. Visit our Insights page to explore our publicly available market data, insights and thought leadership, and to understand our focus, meet our analysts and start a conversation.
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Author
Marc Einstein
Marc has over 20 years of experience in the ICT technology research and consulting focusing largely on the Telecommunications and Enterprise IT sectors. Prior to joining Counterpoint Research Marc held several senior positions in industry analyst firms in the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Based in Tokyo since 2010, Marc is a regular speaker at industry events and a frequent TV panelist. Marc also spent time in the strategy department of the largest mobile gaming company in Japan. A speaker of 6 languages, Marc holds a BSBA in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis and was a visiting student at Rangsit University in Bangkok, Thailand.