BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – In the global race for top Artificial Intelligence (AI) talent, Germany maintains its lead within the European Union but is failing to keep pace with global market leaders such as the US, India, the UK, and Canada. This is according to a labor market study by the Berlin-based think tank Interface (formerly Stiftung Neue Verantwortung).

Canada overtakes Germany

As recently as 2024, Germany held fourth place globally, trailing only the dominant nations of the US, India, and the UK, while maintaining a comfortable lead over Canada and France. However, by 2025, Canada has surpassed the Federal Republic.

On a global scale, the AI labor market is dominated by an American-Indian duopoly. The US has narrowly crossed the historic million-mark with 1,001,839 AI talents, closely followed by India, which now boasts 991,788 talents following a period of rapid growth. Trailing significantly, the UK solidified its third-place position with 145,461 experts, while Canada moved ahead of Germany with a large-scale talent expansion to 133,280 specialists. Consequently, Germany slipped to fifth place with 117,336 talents.

AI boom in Munich and Berlin

Within the European Union, Germany remains the premier AI hub. Particularly in the field of highly specialized researchers and engineers, the Federal Republic underscores its position as the leading European AI center with over 17,000 experts. This boom is driven by two major metropolitan areas: Munich leads the EU for these top-tier professionals with over 3,000 experts, closely followed by Berlin with 2,850. The Federal Republic is increasingly becoming a magnet for international junior talent, reflected in a nearly 20 percent increase in enrollments of Indian students.

US visa policy deters AI talent

According to the study’s authors, Germany’s ability to attract so much international talent is largely due to a period of historical weakness for the former global monopolist, the US. The American model, which for decades relied on attracting the brightest international students and converting them into domestic labor, is under unprecedented political pressure. In September 2025, the US government introduced drastic hurdles, including a high additional fee of 100,000 US dollars for H-1B visas – the exact visa type heavily utilized by tech companies.

Coupled with extensive budget cuts in civilian science funding and restrictions on student visas, this led to a sharp 46 percent drop in arrivals of Indian students and a 26 percent decline for Chinese students. For a country where 67 percent of top AI researchers were born abroad, this represents a watershed moment. The result is a historical first: for the first time in years, more AI talent is migrating from the US to Europe than from Europe to the US.

Low proportion of women in Germany

This geopolitical landscape offers Germany a unique opportunity, which it nevertheless risks squandering due to a structural blind spot in the promotion of women. While the German AI ecosystem is growing rapidly, it is paradoxically becoming increasingly male-dominated. Among entry-level AI workers (Tier 0), the proportion of women in Germany fell to 28.9 percent – the lowest value among all EU countries studied, which average 36.7 percent. Even among top researchers (Tier 2), the female quota slipped from 21.4 percent to 19.3 percent. ‘Germany is a country where women are strongly represented in the labor market overall, yet this is not reflected in the AI sector.’

The analysis of global AI workforce movement is based on data from Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence company that evaluates publicly available professional profiles, job advertisements, and related sources. The October 2025 dataset comprised a total of 616 million individuals from the global workforce./chd/DP/zb