Columbus’ Position in the AI Cluster Race
December 19, 2025
Ross DeVol
Chairman Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow
This analysis represents the sixth installment in Pulse of the Heartland’s ongoing examination of the AI Cluster Race across America’s heartland metros. Building on prior profiles, this piece assesses Columbus, Ohio—evaluating its position through the lenses of talent, innovation, adoption, and infrastructure. Together, these factors illustrate how Columbus is emerging as a competitive, enterprise-oriented AI hub with distinctive strengths rooted in research institutions, workforce development, and large-scale data center investment.
Anchored by the Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus combines frontier R&D, enterprise-grade adoption, a flexible, curriculum-based and domain-relevant talent pipeline with data centers purposely built to support AI—positioning the region as a heartland AI hub. Ohio State is home to two National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Institutes, AI-EDGE (edge/6G and distributed intelligence) and ICICLE (AI cyberinfrastructure and democratization) and the Translational Data Analytics Institute (TDAI). The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is also based in Columbus, further supporting national-scale research and computational capacity. The AI education and professional training programs—both credit-bearing and certification-based—are both broad and discipline-specific, and include those provided by Columbus State Community College (CSCC) and Smart Columbus.
While research capacity provides the foundation, Columbus’ competitive position is equally shaped by how AI is being deployed across its core industries. Major enterprise players are active adopters of AI in health care (OhioHealth and Cardinal Health), finance and insurance (J.P. Morgan Chase and Nationwide), retail and e-commerce (Bath & Body Works and Abercrombie & Fitch) and public sector mobility applications (Smart Columbus). This breadth of adoption distinguishes Columbus from metros where AI activity is more narrowly concentrated.
Underlying this enterprise momentum is a parallel wave of infrastructure investment. Strong investment in AI infrastructure is underway as Google is developing three data center campuses in Columbus and Meta is building an AI-optimized data center (the “Prometheus”). These investments do more than add capacity; they anchor Columbus as a destination for AI-intensive workloads and user businesses seeking proximity to compute.
Local AI automation consulting firms such as Dayhuff Group are assisting regional firms in AI adoption. At the same time, the startup community is finding more sources of early-stage capital available through partnerships with the Ohio Innovation Fund and regional VCs such as Drive Capital. Across 14 metrics measuring AI talent, innovation, and adoption, Columbus ranks eighth among heartland metros—placing it firmly in the competitive middle tier, with upside driven by scale and execution rather than novelty.[i]
Talent
Talent is the binding force between Columbus’ research assets and its enterprise adoption advantage. The Columbus metro area has benefited from the strong talent pipeline provided by OSU for decades. Columbus’ share of the population 25 years of age and older is 41%, which is five percentage points above the national average.
With a large proportion of the employment base in insurance and finance, there are many in the labor force with mathematics and technical skills working outside of traditional high-tech sectors. Additionally, due to the high number of corporations headquartered or with regional operations based in Columbus, the share of employment in management of companies and enterprises is more than double the U.S. average, strengthening the region’s capacity for organizational-scale AI deployment.
There are approximately 145,000 residents in the metro area who hold a bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering and mathematics (CSEM). Even more striking is the depth of advanced talent with roughly 1,300 residents holding PhDs in CSEM—two to three times the proportions held in Chicago, Dallas and Houston, which rank ahead of Columbus in the overall AI rankings. This depth supports applied research and enterprise problem-solving, even in the absence of a large standalone AI startup scene.
OSU’s AI education and training platform is extensive, though its emphasis reflects Columbus’ applied orientation.Rather than focusing primarily on frontier algorithm development, OSU prioritizes AI skills that can be deployed across business, government and health care settings. The“AI fluency” initiative, launched in the fall of 2025, is an initiative exposing first-year students in every major to basic AI education, generative AI awareness and responsible use of AI across all majors. The result will be graduates who not only have technical AI skills but also a rich understanding of how the ethical, secure use of AI tools can be harnessed. Beginning with the Class of 2029, every OSU graduate is expected to be fluent in AI —an approach that prioritizes scale and workforce readiness over specialization alone.[ii]
At the undergraduate level, OSU’s College of Engineering offers technically oriented AI coursework, though the university does not yet offer a standalone bachelor’s degree in AI. Instead, AI education is embedded across disciplines. The Fisher College of Business offers non-degree professional short courses in AI applications in supply chain, product marketing, business strategy and other areas. Domain-specific offerings, such as the graduate certificate in Artificial Intelligence in Digital Health, target professionals who seek to apply AI within regulated and complex environments. The program is designed for professionals with backgrounds in computer science or biomedical engineering who want to develop AI capabilities in health care.[iii] OSU also offers a micro bootcamp in machine learning & AI, with most of these programs fully available online.
The emphasis on applied skills extends beyond the university system. CSCC developed a 30-week, non-credit “Artificial Intelligence IT Certificate” to equip students with in-demand AI skills aligned with regional workforce needs and offered virtually with evening classes for working professionals. The program includes an AI for Manufacturing specialization to apply AI to predictive maintenance, demand forecasting and quality monitoring. The Smart Columbus “Connect Us” Digital Skills Hub further broadens access, aiming to train 10,000 Central Ohio residents by 2027 through a partnership with CSCC, libraries and Goodwill.[iv]
Innovation
Columbus’ innovation profile reflects depth and institutional strength rather than fragmentation. The OSU-led AI-EDGE Institute is one of the NSF- and Department of Homeland Security–funded AI Institutes advancing U.S. leadership in next-generation edge networks (6G and beyond) and distributed AI. By integrating research, knowledge transfer and workforce development, the institute supports a distributed intelligence system to ensure that these networks are self-healing, adaptive and self-optimized with applications spanning remote healthcare, intelligent transportation, smart aerospace and distributed robotics.[v]
Complementing this work is a focus on access and usability. The NSF ICICLE, led by OSU as part of a consortium of universities, will build the next generation of cyberinfrastructure (CI) to more accessibly deliver AI and drive democratization. As cyberinfrastructure becomes more complex and diverse, ICICLE seeks to simplify choices for end users, enabling more effective application of AI for modeling, analytics and automation.[vi] TDAI is an interdisciplinary hub for AI/data science research, supporting over 800 affiliated faculty across 50 disciplines with the goal of driving interdisciplinary research across OSU.
These university-led assets are reinforced by national-scale applied research capacity. The Battelle Memorial Institute, headquartered in Columbus, is a national R&D non-profit organization that is a leader in AI applications in defense, health and material science. The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) provides high-performance AI computing and advanced cybersecurity infrastructure to universities, laboratories and industry partners statewide.[vii] Collectively, these resources have allowed Columbus to be credited with 49 AI research papers published at top AI conferences, 78 AI patents and has obtained 4 federal R&D contract spending on AI.
Adoption
Where Columbus most clearly differentiates itself is in AI adoption at enterprise scale. The region is home to several early adopters of AI, particularly in the health care sector. OhioHealth is deploying Microsoft/Nuance DAX Copilot to auto-draft notes from patient-physician discussions in the operating room to improve efficiency and utilization of surgical suites. Cardinal Health created an AI Center of Excellence to support deployments across the company—including AI-enabled inventory/forecasting, robotics in distribution centers, warehouse automation and supply chain visibility.[viii] A Nationwide Children’s Hospital team recently won the Advanced ML tier in the precisionFDA Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) App-a-thon Challenge: Democratizing and Demystifying Artificial Intelligence (AI). These efforts reflect a mature approach to AI as infrastructure, not experimentation.
This pattern extends beyond health care. J.P. Morgan Chase is the region’s second-largest private sector employer and runs many of its applied AI initiatives out of its large Columbus tech hub. Nationwide is using DigitalOwl’s AI-powered platform for more efficient processing and analysis of vast volumes of medical records, including both conventional and electronic health records. This permits life underwriters to navigate complex and large medical documents by organizing the critical information needed to thoroughly assess an applicant’s medical history.[ix] In retail, AI is being applied to personalization and customer engagement,with Bath & Body Works collaborating with Accenture to apply next-gen AI for more personalized marketing, and Abercrombie & Fitch expanding AI-focused hiring.
Adoption at this scale is reinforced by unparalleled data center investment. Google has three data center campuses that are active, and land has been purchased for additional expansion. Meta is creating its mega data center named Promethius by adding computing capacity to an already existing facility through new server tents. Meta expects the facility to be big enough to draw more than one gigawatt of power by 2026. According to SemiAnalysis, Prometheus will rank among the world’s largest AI training clusters.[x] This concentration of compute positions Columbus as a backbone market for AI workloads nationwide.
A growing services layer is emerging to support this adoption curve. Columbus-based Dayhuff Group’s “Guided AI” offering delivers enterprise-chatbot services, document classification, predictive maintenance and other AI applications. Emplifi is a local firm delivering customer experience platforms and analytics for social media, utilizing AI to measure, optimize and automate customer engagement. Opinosis Analytics is another leading AI consulting firm that specializes in guiding organizations from strategy to hands-on implementation of AI solutions.[xi] These firms play a critical role in translating capability into execution.
Startup activity, while not the region’s defining feature, continues to expand at a steady rate. Redi.Health, an innovative startup focused on improving chronic-disease management using AI, raised $14 million in a Series B venture capital round. Early-stage venture capital availability is improving with VCs such as Rev1 Ventures operating in this space. Drive Capital is an important player headquartered in Columbus. In total, Columbus has recorded 96 AI startups and 34 AI-focused venture capital deals.
Taken together, Columbus’ position in the Heartland AI Cluster Race is defined by scale, readiness and execution. The region’s strengths lie in its ability to translate deep research capacity, a broad and applied talent pipeline and unprecedented data center investment into real-world enterprise adoption across health care, finance, logistics and retail.
While Columbus may not yet rival leading coastal hubs in venture intensity or frontier model development, it is emerging as a backbone market for applied AI, where infrastructure, workforce and institutions are aligned to support sustained deployment at scale. In that sense, Columbus represents a durable and replicable model for how heartland metros can compete in the next phase of the AI economy, particularly by operationalizing impact.
[i] Muro, M., and Methkupally, S. (2025). Mapping the AI Economy: Which Regions are Ready for the Next Technological Leap? Brookings Metro. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mapping-the-ai-economy-which-regions-are-ready-for-the-next-technology-leap/
[ii] https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-launches-bold-ai-fluency-initiative-to-redefine-learning-and-innovation/
[iii] https://gpadmissions.osu.edu/programs/program.aspx?prog=0358
[iv] https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2025/06/06/ohio-free-digital-skills-training
[vi] https://news.osu.edu/nsf-funds-2-ohio-state-based-institutes-to-expand-artificial-intelligence-research/
[viii] https://chaindrugreview.com/cardinal-health-accelerating-the-use-of-ai-in-digital-and-commercial-technologies/
[ix] https://news.nationwide.com/nationwide-is-streamlining-life-underwriting-process-with-advanced-ai-technology/
[x] https://www.fastcompany.com/91369896/meta-is-using-tents-to-build-its-giant-ai-data-centers