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/vs/london-vs-shanghai/  ·  updated 2026-05-08
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London vs Shanghai

London has more capital; Shanghai has the stronger notable-model count. This page picks the chart shape from the data instead of forcing every comparison into the same visual.

MODEL FLIP
00 — Screenshot hook
London has the money. Shanghai has the notable models.
London
$6.8B
Shanghai
$5.0B
London
2
Shanghai
3
3 to 2 tracked notable AI models; 1.3× funding gap. Tracked notable-model denominator only.
TRACKED AI-NATIVE FUNDING VS TRACKED NOTABLE MODELS NO ORG-BENCH OR COMPUTE CHIPS IN THIS SCREENSHOT
01 — Share of world
London 2/100 Shanghai 1/100 rest of world 97/100
Together = 3% of all AI funding tracked worldwide.
London: 1.7% of world · Shanghai: 1.2% of world
🇬🇧 London
2/100
$6.8B · #5 of 12
🇨🇳 Shanghai
1/100
$5.0B · #6 of 12
SRC: epoch · forbes · cbi · manual-gaps 1 SQUARE = 1% OF WORLD AI FUNDING
01.5 — Why this comparison matters

The useful read hub vs hub

┌─ generated from funding, org, model, compute, and overlap signals ─────────────────────────────── ┐
London has more capital; Shanghai has the stronger notable-model count.
London's biggest carrier is Wayve: $3.5B (50.8% of tracked side funding). Shanghai's biggest carrier is SenseTime: $2.0B (39.7% of tracked side funding).
The org treemap is shown because both sides have enough funded orgs for area to mean something.
Funding is HQ-based and limited to AI-native orgs. Compute is counted by datacenter location, so it can disagree with headquarters funding.
NOINDEX: KEEP USEFUL, AVOID THIN SERP SPAM CANONICAL /vs/london-vs-shanghai/
02 — Metric board
🇬🇧 London
#5 of 12 · hub
━━ vs ━━
Shanghai 🇨🇳
#6 of 12 · hub
AI ORGS
London
17
2.4× left
Shanghai
7
NOTABLE MODELS
London
2
1.5× right
Shanghai
3
FUNDING
London
$6.8B
1.3× left
Shanghai
$5.0B
SORTED BY LARGEST VISIBLE GAP NO NORMALIZED BAR LENGTHS; VALUES PRINTED DIRECTLY
note — London runs 1.3× more AI capital than Shanghai. Whether that translates to frontier compute is what the next chart shows.
— ai-race-map · methodology @ /m
03 — Org capital concentration
London's top 3 absorb 71% of tracked funding
Shanghai's top 3 hold 68% of tracked funding.
top-heavy
🇬🇧 London 17 orgs · $6.8B
top 1 51%
top 3 71%
biggest carrier: Wayve · $3.5B
🇨🇳 Shanghai 7 orgs · $5.0B
top 1 40%
top 3 68%
biggest carrier: SenseTime · $2.0B
🇬🇧 London top 3 $4.8B
1 Wayve 51% of London tracked AI-native funding $3.5B 2 ElevenLabs 12% of London tracked AI-native funding $781M 3 Isomorphic Labs 9% of London tracked AI-native funding $600M
🇨🇳 Shanghai top 3 $3.4B
1 SenseTime 40% of Shanghai tracked AI-native funding $2.0B 2 StepFun 14% of Shanghai tracked AI-native funding $718M 3 Biren Technology 14% of Shanghai tracked AI-native funding $700M
London: 17 orgs · Shanghai: 7 orgs. HQ-BASED AI-NATIVE FUNDING ONLY · TOP-3 ROWS SHARE THE HEADLINE BASIS
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Updated 2026-05-08 London → Shanghai → ← world map
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