Christian Schumacher, PhD
Institute for Strategic Management · WU Wien
Previously Copenhagen Business School and Schumpeter Fellow, Harvard University
View full profileREPORTFIRST INDEPENDENT EDITION · WU WIEN
April 2026 · v4.0The State of AI
in Austria 2026
A first independent measurement at the individual worker level. 1.9 million employment records, 107,532 firms, eight years, benchmarked against 37 European peers.
97 %
Austrian firms employ zero AI workers.
Dr. Can Tihanyi
Institute for International Business · WU Wien
A decade studying Austria's AI and digital adoption — Industrie 4.0 to today
View full profileHeadline finding
97 % of Austrian firms employ zero AI workers.
Of the 107,532 firms in Austria's panel, only 3.2 % employ at least one Core AI worker. The AI economy in Austria has roughly 4,000 winners and more than 100,000 spectators. In this large-scale analysis of the Austrian AI workforce, we answer at the individual worker level: who builds AI, where they sit, where they go.
Source: Revelio Labs via WRDS · austria_located segment · Chapter 1, ecosystem panel.
Firms with AI staff
Firms with zero AI staff
Findings
Six findings.
One country, one panel, 1.9 million Austrian workers — read along six findings. The first finding is the strength: a technically deep, mid-career AI workforce that holds its own at the European frontier. The other five are the cracks. The base is too small to compete on scale. The growth engine has stalled since 2021. The frontier leaks talent abroad. The leadership tier is male-dominated. And the pipeline that should renew the system is thinning. Read together, the picture is enviable and fragile in equal measure — and the next five years will decide which way it tilts.
1,360 in 2018 → 4,082 in 2025
01The strength · Chapter 1
The Core AI workforce tripled. Top-three in Europe.
From 1,360 in 2018 to 4,082 in 2025. By Core AI share of employment, Austria ranks third out of thirty-eight European peers. The depth is real. So is the quality. The story does not end there.
Read the chapterAustria · 0.91 / 1,000
Netherlands · 7.2 / 1,000
02The small base · Chapter 4
Top-three on quality. Working from a small base.
Austria places third out of thirty-eight on Core AI share of employment, the depth metric. On density it sits #19, behind Poland, Czechia, and Germany. The Netherlands and Denmark deploy five to eight times Austria's density per 1,000 employed. Quality is real. Scale is not.
Read the chapterPeak 21 % · 2021 → 9.7 % · 2025
03The base · Chapter 1
Growth is declining.
97 % of Austrian firms still employ no AI workers. The engine that should be filling that gap is slowing fast: annual growth has halved, from over 20 % at the 2021 peak to under 10 % in 2025. Inflows nearly doubled and outflows more than tripled, but the rate is the headline. At this pace, doubling Core AI from here takes more than a decade.
Read the chapterBuild · 18 %
04The frontier · Chapter 3
Build-tier brain drain runs at 18 %. The frontier leaks fastest.
The most strategically valuable cohort leaves the fastest. Build is portable. Enable is anchored. The frontier brain drain leaks. The back office stays.
Read the chapterBuild · 18.6 %
05The gender gap · Chapter 2
18.6 % female in Build. Lowest at the frontier.
Adjacent and Integrate sit near 30 % female. The Build tier collapses to 18.6 %. The most strategic tier is the most male-dominated. Lifting the Build-tier share by five points takes about fifty-five more women, and meaningfully shifts Austria's frontier capability.
Read the chapter11.4 % · 2018 → 9.0 % · 2025
06The pipeline · Chapter 5
9 % entry-level. The intake is shrinking.
Entry-level share has slipped from 11.4 % in 2018 to 9.0 % in 2025. Hardly anyone new is coming in; the workforce is getting older without replacement. The slowest-moving of the findings, and the hardest to reverse once the trend crosses the renewal line.
Read the chapterSection 03 · The report
Six chapters. One honest picture.
Six chapters cut the same 1.9 million individual-level employment records by ecosystem, gender, brain drain, benchmarking, seniority, and region. The full picture of who builds AI in Austria, where they sit, and where they go.
Use this report
Download. Cite. Get in touch.
Download
The full report as PDF, plus six per-chapter PDFs sharing the same design. Every artefact is sourced from the same Revelio Labs panel.
Open the downloads pageCite
Suggested citation for the full report. BibTeX is in the methodology page.
Schumacher, C., & Tihanyi, C. (2026). The State of AI in Austria 2026. WU Wien.
Method: Revelio Labs via WRDS · austria_located segment · 2018–2025 · ~120 Core AI roles · taxonomy κ = 0.84.