What you need to know: California continues to lead in technology as home to the majority of the nation’s top AI companies.

SACRAMENTO - Home to Silicon Valley and the birthplace of the tech industry, California continues to dominate this sector as the leader in AI. The state is home to 32 of 50 top AI companies worldwide. In addition to championing responsible use of this emerging industry, California is harnessing its potential to increase efficiency and support state operations.  

“California is a state of innovators and doers – a place where the future is born. We are proud of the technology industry, which has helped our state dominate as the fifth largest economy in the world. As the AI industry continues to grow, California is thoughtfully implementing this new and fast-moving technology to advance and benefit the public good.” - Governor Gavin Newsom

Harnessing the power of GenAI

AI is already changing the world, and California will play a pivotal role in defining that future. The state is home to 32 of the world’s 50 leading AI companies, high-impact research and education institutions, and a quarter of the technology’s patents and conference papers.

California has launched efforts to help the state take advantage of this emerging technology, while also creating responsible policy guardrails to protect Californians, businesses, and workers. In 2023, Governor Newsom signed an executive order laying out California’s measured approach to state generative AI (GenAI) procurement. That EO has shaped the future of ethical, transparent, and trustworthy GenAI deployment, all while California remains the world’s GenAI leader. 

In 2024, Governor Newsom announced the state’s efforts to help utilize GenAI technologies to solve challenges, everything from reducing traffic to helping address homelessness. 

California’s AI global leadership 

Governor Newsom also co-hosted a GenAI summit in May 2024 with leaders across academia, industry, civil society, and government to discuss how the state can best use this transformative technology on behalf of Californians. In August, the state partnered with NVIDIA to launch a first-of-its-kind AI collaboration. In September, Governor Newsom convened the world’s leading experts on GenAI to help California develop workable guardrails for deploying GenAI, focusing on developing an empirical, science-based trajectory analysis of frontier models and their capabilities and attendant risks.

Last year, Governor Newsom also signed a series of bills to crack down on sexually explicit deepfakes and require AI watermarking, protect performers’ digital likenesses, and combat deepfake election content.