California’s AI dominance
California continues to dominate the AI sector. In addition to being the birthplace of AI, the state is home to 32 of the 50 top AI companies worldwide. California leads U.S. demand for AI talent. In 2024, 15.7% of all U.S. AI job postings were in California — #1 by state, well ahead of Texas (8.8% and New York (5.8%), per the 2025 Stanford AI Index. In 2024, more than half of global VC funding for AI and machine learning startups went to companies in the Bay Area. California is also home to three of the four companies that have passed the $3 trillion valuation mark. Each of these California-based companies — Google, Apple, and Nvidia — are tech companies involved in AI and have created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
What the law does:
SB 53 establishes new requirements for frontier AI developers creating stronger:
✅ Transparency: Requires large frontier developers to publicly publish a framework on its website describing how the company has incorporated national standards, international standards, and industry-consensus best practices into its frontier AI framework.
✅ Innovation: Establishes a new consortium within the Government Operations Agency to develop a framework for creating a public computing cluster. The consortium, called CalCompute, will advance the development and deployment of artificial intelligence that is safe, ethical, equitable, and sustainable by fostering research and innovation.
✅ Safety: Creates a new mechanism for frontier AI companies and the public to report potential critical safety incidents to California’s Office of Emergency Services.
✅ Accountability: Protects whistleblowers who disclose significant health and safety risks posed by frontier models, and creates a civil penalty for noncompliance, enforceable by the Attorney General’s office.
✅ Responsiveness: Directs the California Department of Technology to annually recommend appropriate updates to the law based on multistakeholder input, technological developments, and international standards.
A signing message can be found here.