The Rise of the Rest (of the World)

We hear a lot these days about the so-called “rise of the rest”—the ascent of second-tier American cities such as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit, and Nashville as challengers to the established tech capitals of the Bay Area, New York, Boston, and Seattle. But the reality is that the rise of the rest is happening mainly in cities outside of the United States.

That’s the key takeaway from the 2018 edition of the Global Startup Ecosystem Report from Startup Genome. The report charts the rise of vibrant startup ecosystems in Europe, Canada, and especially China. It also describes which cities and countries are leading the way in the fastest-growing sub-sectors of the tech industry, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics. The report includes data on more than 1 million companies in nearly 100 ecosystems, and examines capitalization, founders’ biographies, and a company’s connectedness with the greater ecosystem, among other factors.