London boasts the second-most vibrant tech sector in the world, according to a closely-watched study which found Zurich had leapfrogged San Francisco and Singapore to top the rankings.
Britain’s capital nudged up one place in Z/Yen’s Smart Centres Index into second place in the biannual study that assesses cities’ ability to create, develop and deploy world-leading technology. London overtook the west coast’s futuristic San Francisco, which slipped dramatically down the rankings, to claim second position, but was pipped to the top spot by the Switzerland’s financial capital.
London’s overall rating grew by 19 points from the previous study published in May, narrowly missing out on the top spot by just three points. Singapore rounded off the rankings’ top three, climbing six places to beat New York and the UK’s Oxford.
San Francisco, the home of technology hotbed Silicon Valley that spawned the likes of Google, Microsoft and Tesla, was among the report’s biggest fallers. It slipped three places from the top spot that it secured six months ago, narrowly beating both Oxford and the Israeli capital Tel Aviv into fourth place.
The west coast tech hub’s collapse allowed Zurich to claim first place for the first time in the survey’s history. The Swiss hub is home to a vibrant robotics and ‘deep tech’ scene, the term used to define frontier technologies like artificial technology and quantum computing.
Oxford and Cambridge, which thanks to their world-leading universities have become global tech hubs in their own right, both featured in the survey’s top 10. The two cities are where several vibrant university spin-offs are headquartered, like Arm and Darktrace – both in Cambridge – and Oxford Ionics, and boast highly-skilled workforces that attract some of the world’s most advanced tech companies.
“AI continues to be a technology exciting business interest and investment froth,” said professor Michael Mainelli, the former Lord Mayor of London and chairman of Z/yen. “However, centres with the skills, know how and research depth in AI are not just the ones with investment bubbles.
“Centres appear to be emerging that focus on ‘boring’ AI work and research into statistical probity, IP rights, information chain-of-custody, regulation standards, data provenance and ethics.”