Austria’s AI strength is not reaching Austrian businesses

Artificial intelligence is widely regarded as a critical technology that companies need to adopt to remain competitive going forward. Political debates often focus on AI models, chips, and data centers. Yet the real bottleneck lies elsewhere: people. A new report by WU Vienna provides the first comprehensive picture of how many people in Austria actually work in AI, where they are employed, and how the workforce is evolving.

Excelling in expertise, lagging in adoption

The report “Austria’s AI Workforce 2026” analyzes the development of Austria’s AI workforce based on 2.86 million employment records covering the period from 2018 to 2025. The study paints a nuanced picture of Austria’s AI landscape. Austria ranks third among 38 European countries when it comes to the level of technological specialization and expertise of its AI workforce, placing it among the continent’s leading AI hubs. Around 60 percent of Austria’s AI professionals work in Vienna. At the same time, the country ranks only nineteenth when measured by the share of AI specialists in the overall workforce. Austria possesses world-class AI expertise but deploys it far less broadly across its economy than many comparable countries. Today, 97 percent of Austrian companies do not employ any AI specialists at all.

“Models and computing power have become commodities. The market can provide both. What it cannot provide is people,” says Christian Schumacher of WU Vienna’s Institute for Strategic Management

“Anyone talking about an AI strategy without talking about people is missing the point. AI adoption is a workforce challenge, not an IT challenge,” adds Can Tihanyi of WU Vienna’s Institute for International Business. “Technology adoption almost never fails because of the technology itself. It fails because there are not enough people to bring it into organizations.”

The report also points to a marked slowdown in growth. After expanding by 12.5 percent in 2024, the number of highly specialized AI professionals in Core AI roles grew by only 7.1 percent in 2025, representing a decline of more than 40 percent in growth momentum within a single year.

The greatest losses are at the technological frontier

Austria is losing precisely the specialists who develop and advance AI technologies. Over the course of their careers, 17.2 percent of professionals in so-called Build roles leave the country. In areas such as Generative AI and Natural Language Processing, the figure exceeds 23 percent. Particularly concerning is that 44 percent of these departures occur during the first year of employment. At the same time, the talent pipeline remains thin: only 6 percent of Austria’s AI workforce consists of entry-level professionals, compared with 23 percent across non-AI occupations.

“Austria is not losing the breadth of its AI talent base. It is losing its position at the technological frontier,” says Andreas Schumacher, Chief Innovation Officer and Member of the Executive Board at VTU Group. “To retain highly qualified AI experts, organizations must offer attractive projects, development opportunities, and meaningful technical responsibility from day one. The first year is when people decide whether they stay.”

Key levers for bringing Austria’s AI potential into the economy

Based on these findings, the authors derive three key recommendations for policymakers and public institutions. First, Austria needs to expand university capacity for educating AI professionals. Second, companies, particularly SMEs, should be supported through targeted AI readiness programs that help them adopt AI technologies in practice, including access to shared infrastructure and advisory services. Third, measures are needed to retain AI specialists in Austria over the long term. Not every company needs its own AI team, however. Technology transfer centers could help bridge this gap and make advanced AI expertise more accessible across the economy.

About the Report

“Austria’s AI Workforce 2026” is based on an analysis of 2.86 million employment records, 1.23 million individual career histories, and more than 123,000 companies in Austria. The data were analyzed through Revelio Labs and Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) and benchmarked against data from 37 other European countries. The study represents the most comprehensive analysis of Austria’s AI workforce to date.

Further, the report combines academic research with insights from leading companies and is intended to provide business leader and policymakers with a robust, data-based foundation for AI adoption and workforce planning. Produced at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, the report also incorporates perspectives from executives at OMV, Infineon, Magna, VTU Group, Saubermacher, Müller Transporte, and NOWEVOLVE.

The report is available in two editions: a Practitioner Report (34 pages, ISBN 978-3-200-11327-5) and a Full Scientific Report (70 pages, ISBN 978-3-200-11326-8). Both versions can be downloaded free of charge from https://stateofai.at.