In AI arms race, Swiss neutrality is double-edged sword

From Google and Anthropic to tech startups, artificial intelligence developers are expanding in Switzerland – despite concerns that military neutrality may curb access to lucrative foreign defence markets. Switzerland is quietly becoming the world’s hub for artificial intelligence (AI) talent. While an increasingly fractious AI arms race between the US and China grabs headlines, the Alpine country has been recruiting: it is now home to twice the number of AI researchers relative to its population than America or rival centres such as the UK. In less than two years, OpenAI, Anthropic, Jeff Bezos’s Prometheus venture and a growing number of startups have established or expanded research in Switzerland, making the country of under ten million people a top industry spot by some measures. “I would wager that now, we have a higher density of large tech corporations here than you would see anywhere else in the world,” said Alexandre Meldem from the Deep Tech Nation Switzerland Foundation ...