Texas AI Jobs Up 2.1% YoY as California Surges 5.4%, Squeezing Austin

Texas AI jobs grew 2.1% year-over-year in Austin through Q2 2024, per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. California's Bay Area surged 5.4% BLS. Layoffs stall momentum, reports the Austin American-Statesman.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index hit 29, per CoinGecko CoinGecko. This investor caution dries VC for Texas AI startups. Bitcoin traded at $76,282, down 0.1%. Ethereum dropped 1.3% to $2,262.

Austin benefited from Tesla's Gigafactory and Oracle expansions. Big Tech layoffs erased 15,000+ Texas jobs last year, per state reports. Smaller firms suffered most.

Layoffs Hit Austin Startups Lacking Big Tech Cushions

Startups form 60% of Austin's AI workforce, per CBRE's 2024 Tech Talent Report CBRE. They burn cash fast without buffers. VC funding fell 30% YoY in Q1 2024, CBRE adds.

California draws talent to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. These firms hire experts in transformers and large language models (LLMs). BLS data confirms Austin's 2.1% lag.

Texas VC deals lag Silicon Valley 4:1 per capita, PitchBook reports. Austin raised $5.2 billion in 2022. Investors favor proven ecosystems now.

Crypto fear worsens this. Backers demand GPU-efficient architectures first.

California Pulls AI Talent from Texas

Stanford and UC Berkeley produce 2,500 AI graduates yearly. Bay Area VC topped $50 billion in 2023. This scales reinforcement learning and vision teams.

Austin talent seeks equity in scale-ups. Remote work declined after 2023 office mandates from Meta and NVIDIA.

CBRE ranks Texas 8th in AI postings, trailing California 3:1. Meta listed 1,200 Bay Area AI roles last quarter.

University of Texas grads head to coasts. Austin lost 4,500 net AI jobs since 2023.

Fear & Greed at 29 Shortens Startup Runways

VCs eye burn rates amid GPU shortages. Training a 70B-parameter LLM costs $100 million+, SemiAnalysis estimates. Texas startups pay 20% more for inference without hyperscaler deals.

Fear & Greed at 29 matches 2022 lows, CoinGecko shows. Investors seek 18-month profitability now.

Texas trails California's 300+ AI exits since 2020. Acquisitions like Microsoft's Inflection pull capital north.

Texas AI saw $1.2 billion less VC in 2024 vs. 2022, Crunchbase data.

Texas AI Lag Risks Energy Innovation Lead

Texas excels in energy AI via edge computing for oilfields. Layoffs threaten 10% market share, Brookings warns Brookings.

CHIPS Act funds $39 billion in chips. Brookings notes regional lags risk shortfalls.

Austin startups lead edge AI for seismic data. Cuts hand ground to California cloud rivals.

Texas holds 12% of U.S. AI patents, USPTO reports.

Austin Path to Reverse Texas AI Jobs Lag

Texas offers $1.4 billion in AI R&D incentives. UT Austin teams with xAI on multimodal models.

Costs run 30% below California. Fear & Greed over 50 doubles funding, CoinGecko patterns show.

Hybrid work retains 70% staff, Deloitte surveys. Tesla's AI compute bolsters credibility.

NSF grants target cyber-AI. TSMC Arizona GPUs enable 2025 catch-up.

Texas grit sets Austin for 7% AI jobs growth next year.