ICYMI: California is home to 32 of the top 50 AI companies

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.