Methodology
AI Bottlenecks tracks the state of AI in each region across four pillars — compute,
regulation, funding, and talent. Every indicator surfaces a bottleneck, not just a number.
Data is refreshed every Monday by a GitHub Actions cron and committed to the
public
repo. Per-region data is available as JSON at
/{region}/api/indicators.json;
the registry of regions is at
/api/regions.json. All data is released under
CC BY 4.0.
The indicators below are the canonical framework. Each region's edition fills in the same slots with region-specific values and sources. Europe is the launch region; the United States, United Kingdom, and China editions are in progress.
Indicators
Definitions are illustrated with the European edition's current values and sources. Other regions will use the same indicator IDs and pillar groupings.
| Indicator | Pillar | Source (EU) | Cadence | Automation | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Factories operational | Compute | EuroHPC JU | quarterly | scraper | 2026-05-17 |
| Public-research GPUs | Compute | Segler Consulting | quarterly | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| HV substation wait time | Compute | Infrastructure Investor | monthly | llm-extracted | 2026-05-17 |
| Next AI Act deadline | Regulation | AI Act Explorer | weekly | scraper | 2026-05-17 |
| National sandboxes live | Regulation | European AI Office | monthly | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| GPAI providers registered | Regulation | AI Office register | monthly | scraper | 2026-05-17 |
| Q1 2026 European VC | Funding | Crunchbase | quarterly | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| Largest 2026 EU AI rounds | Funding | Crunchbase | monthly | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| Late-stage gap vs. US | Funding | PitchBook | quarterly | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| AI talent per capita | Talent | interface-eu | annual | manual | 2026-05-17 |
| Senior researcher net flow | Talent | Euronews | annual | llm-extracted | 2026-05-17 |
| ERC Starting Grants 2025 | Talent | ELLIS | annual | scraper | 2026-05-17 |
Validation rules
No data update is merged until the validation step passes. The checks run in CI on every
weekly refresh and on every pull request that touches src/data/:
- Schema conformance. Each JSON file must match the TypeScript types in
src/data/schema.ts(pillar enum, required fields, well-formed source URLs). - Non-negativity. Counted indicators (AI factories operational, national sandboxes live, GPAI providers registered, ERC starting grants) must be ≥ 0.
- Reachable sources. Every
source.urlmust use HTTPS and respond to a HEAD request with status < 400. Broken sources block the update. - Anomaly guard. Week-over-week swings > 50% on numeric indicators are flagged for human review rather than auto-merged.
When an automated update fails validation, the cron job opens a draft PR with the diff and the failing checks so a human can investigate. When a source URL stops responding for two consecutive runs, the indicator card switches to a source unavailable state on the live site rather than showing stale data.
Sources & license
Primary sources for the European edition include Eurostat, EuroHPC JU, the European AI Office, and reporting from Crunchbase, PitchBook, and major European outlets. Each future region edition will document its own primary sources. All re-published data here is released under CC BY 4.0; the underlying sources retain their own terms.