Seattle and Toronto are squaring off on the baseball diamond this week in the American League Championship Series. But how do the two cities fare in a battle over tech bragging rights?
Both feature powerhouse tech markets. Seattle ranked No. 2 on CBRE’s recent list of top North American markets for tech talent — with Toronto right behind at No. 3. Seattle also edged out Toronto in CBRE’s measure of AI talent.
Seattle is anchored by longtime behemoths Microsoft and Amazon, along with other large firms headquartered in the region such as Expedia, Zillow, and T-Mobile. Toronto lays claim to companies like Rogers Communications and Thomson Reuters — but it doesn’t quite match Seattle’s depth of corporate tech prowess.
Several U.S. tech companies have opened Toronto satellite offices in recent years. But a quick look at GeekWire’s engineering center list shows more than 100 outposts in the Seattle area, including substantial operations for Google, Meta, and Apple. WINNER: Seattle
On the startup front, Toronto has a superstar in Cohere, the fast-growing enterprise AI model company that just hit a $7 billion valuation.
As we’ve reported in GeekWire, the Seattle startup scene is full of technical talent but lacks a breakout AI upstart on Cohere’s level.
Toronto is also home to security startup 1Password (hit a $6.8 billion valuation in 2022); VPN company Tailscale (raised $160 million this year); and autonomous trucking startup Waabi (raised $200 million last year).
According to CB Insights, the Seattle area has 14 unicorns, while the Toronto region has 11.
And in Startup Genome’s latest global ecosystem ranking, Seattle came in at No. 15 and Toronto at No. 20.
The GeekWire 200 list has many longstanding tech companies and fast-growing startups in the Seattle area — including sales software company Highspot ($3.5 billion valuation in 2022); fusion startup Helion (backed by Sam Altman and SoftBank); and health data firm Truveta (reached unicorn status this year).
Software testing startup Statsig was ranked No. 5 on the GeekWire 200 before its recent $1.1 billion acquisition to OpenAI.
Despite lacking an AI all-star, the Emerald City gets the slight edge here. WINNER: Seattle
Seattle and Toronto have premier research universities. EduRank lists the University of Washington at No. 8 and University of Toronto at No. 12 among North American schools. Times Higher Education flips the order, with Toronto at No. 21 and UW at No. 25.
The University of Waterloo in Toronto has its own AI Institute. The UW in Seattle boasts one of the top-ranked computer science programs in the U.S.
Outside academia, Toronto has the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Seattle has the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
This one is a toss up. WINNER: Tie
Tech luminaries: Seattle’s lineup features veteran household names like Bill Gates (Microsoft co-founder), Rich Barton (Zillow and Expedia co-founder), and Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO). Toronto counters with AI heavyweights Geoffrey Hinton (Nobel laureate and “godfather of deep learning”), Raquel Urtasun (Waabi founder), and Aidan Gomez (Cohere CEO). WINNER: Toronto
Both cities have baseball stadiums with retractable roofs, though Toronto’s Rogers Centre was the first in the world to debut that engineering feat. T-Mobile Park in Seattle features one of MLB’s largest video display scoreboards. WINNER: Tie
FINAL SCORE: Seattle 2, Toronto 1 (with two ties).
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