Developers building AI.
What share of active developers are building AI projects?
9% of UK developers active on GitHub since January 2025 are building AI projects, against 13.5% in China (n=105,838 UK developers).
Sample: 105,838 developers · source: public GitHub profiles · data to 24 September 2026
By city
| City | Figure | Sample (developers) | In words |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 11.2% | 39,316 | London: 11.2% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=39,316). |
| Reading | 11% | 438 | Reading: 11% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=438). |
| Belfast | 8.8% | 841 | Belfast: 8.8% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=841). |
| Edinburgh | 8.8% | 2,722 | Edinburgh: 8.8% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=2,722). |
| Exeter | 8.5% | 341 | Exeter: 8.5% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=341). |
| West Midlands | 8.4% | 1,430 | West Midlands: 8.4% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,430). |
| Greater Manchester | 8.3% | 3,734 | Greater Manchester: 8.3% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=3,734). |
| Oxford | 8.3% | 1,532 | Oxford: 8.3% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,532). |
| Bristol | 8.1% | 1,956 | Bristol: 8.1% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,956). |
| Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole | 8% | 288 | Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole: 8% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=288). |
| Cambridge | 7.9% | 1,726 | Cambridge: 7.9% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,726). |
| West Yorkshire | 7.8% | 1,571 | West Yorkshire: 7.8% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,571). |
| Brighton and Hove | 7.7% | 716 | Brighton and Hove: 7.7% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=716). |
| Nottingham | 7.7% | 745 | Nottingham: 7.7% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=745). |
| Southampton | 7.7% | 519 | Southampton: 7.7% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=519). |
| Cardiff | 7.5% | 656 | Cardiff: 7.5% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=656). |
| Bath | 7.4% | 323 | Bath: 7.4% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=323). |
| Tyne and Wear | 7.4% | 893 | Tyne and Wear: 7.4% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=893). |
| Aberdeen | 7.2% | 251 | Aberdeen: 7.2% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=251). |
| South Yorkshire | 7.2% | 1,053 | South Yorkshire: 7.2% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,053). |
| Leicester | 7.1% | 396 | Leicester: 7.1% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=396). |
| Liverpool City Region | 6.9% | 893 | Liverpool City Region: 6.9% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=893). |
| Norwich | 6.8% | 336 | Norwich: 6.8% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=336). |
| Glasgow | 6.6% | 1,769 | Glasgow: 6.6% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=1,769). |
| York | 6.3% | 395 | York: 6.3% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=395). |
UK vs China
| Country | Figure | Sample (developers) | In words |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 13.5% | 118,966 | China: 13.5% of active developers are building AI projects (UK 9%; n=118,966). |
How this is measured
Base: developers with at least one public repository updated since 1 January 2025. An AI project is a repository whose name, description or topics name an LLM, model provider, agent, RAG / vector search, MCP, prompts, embeddings, fine-tuning, transformers, diffusion or an AI coding tool (DevInsights::AI_PATTERN); GitHub Skills course exercises (repositories named skills-…) are not projects and do not count. value = % of the base with at least one AI project. Country segment: mainland China for comparison (value_json.uk_pct on it, china_pct on the overall). A repository counts by its last update, so a project last touched before 2025 is not in the base. Source: public GitHub profiles and their public repositories (the teky search dataset; each finding's date is the date the data runs to). Population: GitHub accounts whose stated location we confirm as the UK or mainland China — the geocoder's country is re-checked against the location text (DevLocation), which drops "Cambridge, MA", "Stanford, CA", "Birmingham, AL" and "Philadelphia, PA"-style mis-codes and bare town names shared with a larger place abroad, and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; organisation accounts and profiles with no GitHub account are excluded. It describes developers who publish on GitHub and state where they are, not every developer: it leans towards open-source contributors, academics and students, and Chinese developers also use Gitee, so China is under-represented. n = developers (GitHub accounts) unless the insight says otherwise.
Cite this
Free to quote with a credit and a link.
ProdReady Recruitment (2026). Developers building AI. Data to 24 September 2026. https://ProdReadyRecruitment.com/research/dev_ai_builders
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