About · Why the Triangle

Putting AI to work in the Triangle

Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Research Triangle Park form one labor market with three research universities. Employers here already run AI in production. This page shows what is on the ground, with sources.

Where we start

What this page covers

Many of the largest AI models are built by companies on the coasts. We think North Carolina can do more than use them as a customer: it can build the skills to use them well and the companies that sell AI to others.

The Triangle has three research universities and employers with documented headquarters or campuses here. This page shows what is here and who is here, then explains the skill gap we work on. Every number has a source, and where a source is old we say so.

Where this is

The Triangle on one page

Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State, the three universities that gave the region its name, are within 23 straight-line miles of one another. The diagram uses the same employer entries as the directory further down. The star is the Atlantic Union Bank Convention Center in Raleigh, home of All Things AI 2027.

On small screens, scroll sideways inside this region to see the whole diagram.

The Research Triangle and the employers in our directoryA diagram of the Triangle with Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State as the three corners. 17 employers are marked at their Triangle sites. The list next to the diagram gives the same facts in text.9 mi23 mi21 miDukeUNC-Chapel HillNC State4Raleigh4Research Triangle Park3Cary3Durham2Morrisville1Holly SpringsAll Things AI 20275 milesHeadquarters hereCampus only

A diagram drawn from coordinates, not a street map. Distances are straight-line miles between the three campuses. The number in each bubble is how many employers in the directory below have a site there.

Employers by place

Raleigh 4
Red Hat, Pendo, Pryon, Advance Auto Parts
Research Triangle Park 4
IQVIA, Cisco, IBM, Tempus AI
Cary 3
SAS Institute, MetLife, Deutsche Bank
Durham 3
Google Cloud, NVIDIA, Fidelity Investments
Morrisville 2
Lenovo, Microsoft
Holly Springs 1
Fujifilm Biotechnologies

Open a street map on OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The place

Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill

Downtown Raleigh at golden hour, seen from Dorothea Dix Park: office towers and mid-rise buildings above tree-lined streets, with soft clouds behind.
Downtown Raleigh from Dorothea Dix ParkPhoto: “Raleigh Skyline” by Abhiram Juvvadi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and cropped. This resized and cropped copy is also licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Both links open in a new tab.
The downtown Durham skyline under a blue sky with scattered clouds: a blue glass office building, a gold Art Deco tower and a tall glass tower rising above green trees, with a brick smokestack at the far left.
Downtown DurhamPhoto: “Downtown Durham Skyline” by Discover Durham, CC BY 4.0. Resized and cropped. Both links open in a new tab.
The stone tower of Duke University Chapel rising against an orange and blue sunset sky, framed by trees and campus buildings.
Duke University Chapel, DurhamPhoto: “Duke Chapel” by Discover Durham, CC BY 4.0. Resized and cropped. Both links open in a new tab.
The Old Well at UNC-Chapel Hill: a white columned rotunda with a green copper dome, standing among tall trees on a brick plaza.
The Old Well, UNC-Chapel HillPhoto: “Old Well” by yeungb, CC BY 3.0. Resized and cropped. Both links open in a new tab.
The Memorial Belltower at NC State, a tall pale stone tower against a blue sky, seen through pink cherry blossoms and a flowering dogwood.
The Memorial Belltower, NC State, RaleighPhoto: “Belltower ncsu” by Suzie Tremmel, CC BY 2.0. Resized and cropped. Both links open in a new tab.

Why North Carolina

What the 2026 rankings say

Two studies published this year. They show where the state is strong and where it still has work to do.

No. 2

State for business overall

CNBC's 2026 study put North Carolina second, nine points behind Ohio. The state has finished in the top two six years in a row.

No. 9

Innovation capacity

NC Commerce's 2026 Tracking Innovation report ranks the state ninth on 41 measures. It is the first time North Carolina has been in the top ten.

North Carolina's rank in each CNBC category, 2026

Out of 50 states. Overall, North Carolina placed second, nine points behind Ohio.

  • EconomyNo. 1
  • WorkforceNo. 3
  • Access to capitalNo. 5
  • EducationNo. 12
  • Cost of livingNo. 35
1st50th

Sources: CNBC America's Top States for Business 2026, as reported by WECT (opens in a new tab) and NC Newsline (opens in a new tab); NC Department of Commerce, Tracking Innovation 2026 (opens in a new tab). Rankings describe the business environment. They do not measure conference attendance.

On the ground

What is here today

About 7,000 acres

Research Triangle Park

More than 300 companies, and the largest research park in the United States. It is about 15 miles from the Raleigh convention center where All Things AI 2027 takes place.

3 research universities

Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State

No more than 23 miles apart. NC State runs a Data Science and AI Academy.

17 employers

With a headquarters or campus here

From Red Hat and SAS to Fidelity and MetLife. Each one is dated and sourced in the directory below.

September 2025

State AI executive order

Governor Stein created an AI Leadership Council and an AI Accelerator inside the state IT department, to work on AI literacy, governance and deployment.

Sources: Research Triangle Park (opens in a new tab) (acreage, companies, largest in the US, and the three universities); Governor's office, September 2, 2025 (opens in a new tab). Distances are straight-line miles we computed from campus coordinates.

What we see

Three things about AI in the Triangle

  1. 01

    AI is already in production here

    Duke Health announced in January 2025 that it would give 5,000 clinicians at more than 150 clinics an AI tool that drafts notes from patient visits. Duke Health (opens in a new tab) IQVIA launched its IQVIA.ai agent platform in March 2026, announced from Research Triangle Park. IQVIA (opens in a new tab)

  2. 02

    The gap is skill

    Using a model well takes practice: choosing a tool, giving it a clear task, checking the answer against the job, and improving the next try. Jobs that call for AI skills paid a 56% wage premium on average in PwC's 2025 global study of job ads. PwC (opens in a new tab)

  3. 03

    Where data lives is a choice

    Some employers need their data, and the models that read it, kept close for privacy or regulatory reasons. Organizations can keep more of that under local control by choosing the right software, hardware and policies. The directory below lists Triangle employers whose products address parts of that work.

Skill

Learning to use AI takes practice

A license gives someone access to a tool. Using it well takes practice, so at All Things AI we teach a four-step loop: choose a tool, guide it, check what comes back, and improve the next pass. It applies on a bank operations desk, in a state agency or for a founder with no engineers.

Wage premium for jobs that require AI skills, average across the countries PwC studied
  • 202325%
  • 202456%

Source: PwC 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer (opens in a new tab). This is a global figure. We do not have a North Carolina wage number of our own.

People from 1,897 different employers registered across our first two conferences, according to our registration records.

AI Skills for Work

Local control

Keeping data and models close to home

Local control means an organization sets its own rules for where its data lives and which models read it. Large employers feel this as procurement, privacy and cost. Some regulated ones restrict where certain data is allowed to go.

Several directory entries make software or hardware used in AI work: Red Hat's AI platform for running models and agents, SAS's analytics and decisioning products, and Lenovo's AI PCs and servers, which it sells from its North America headquarters in Morrisville. Each card in the directory links its source.

The state is working on its side of this too. The September 2025 executive order created an AI Accelerator inside the Department of Information Technology to coordinate governance, partnerships and training across agencies.

Who is here

Headquarters and campuses in the Triangle

17 employers with a headquarters or a documented campus in Wake, Durham or Orange County. Each card names the site, dates the fact and links where it comes from.

An employer is listed when its headquarters is in the Triangle, or when it operates a campus, office or lab there that a public source documents. Each entry states what the site is, when the source is from (asOf is the month or year the source describes, or the month we read a live company page), and links the source. Sites elsewhere in North Carolina are left to the full directory. Sources checked 2026-10-10. Amazon's data center in Richmond County and Meta's in Forest City, for example, are in North Carolina but not in the Triangle, so they are in the full company directory and not here.

All 17 at a glance

Headquartered in the Triangle (7)

Companies whose headquarters sits in Wake, Durham or Orange County.

Technology campuses of global companies (6)

Engineering, research and lab sites of companies headquartered elsewhere.

Enterprise campuses (4)

Large technology and operations sites of banks, insurers and manufacturers.

Missing an employer, or see a number that is out of date? Tell us at info@allthingsai.org and we will check the source.

Company names and logos belong to their owners. They appear here only to identify each employer, and their use does not imply that the company endorses or sponsors All Things AI.

Putting it together

One labor market, many employers

Raleigh is the capital. Durham and Chapel Hill add research and clinical institutions. Cary, Morrisville and Research Triangle Park host software, technology and research campuses. Employers draw on all of it as one pool of people.

They say so themselves. Advance Auto Parts said access to technology talent was the main reason it moved its headquarters to Raleigh. Virginia Business (opens in a new tab) Microsoft said the Triangle's colleges and technical skill base drew its 2019 expansion in Morrisville. WRAL TechWire (opens in a new tab) Apple leases a building in Cary and owns one in Durham while its larger Research Triangle Park campus is on hold. News & Observer (opens in a new tab)

Those are the reasons All Things AI 2027 is in Raleigh. See the 2027 conference

The community already at work here

Atlantic Union Bank Convention Center in downtown Raleigh
Atlantic Union Bank Convention Center, Raleigh: the venue for All Things AI 2027.
Attendees talking in a crowded hallway outside the Grand Ballroom at All Things AI 2026
Conversations in the hallway between sessions, All Things AI 2026 in Durham.
Business and technical leaders connecting at All Things AI
Business and technical people at the same table at All Things AI.

Notes: Employer sites are publicly announced or reported operations, and each card in the directory gives its source and the date it describes. The directory lists a company when its headquarters is in Wake, Durham or Orange County, or when a public source documents a campus, office or lab there. Distances are straight-line miles.