For citizens, companies, event coordinators, and others, cognitive cities will stand out from the crowd. For business leaders, cognitive cities will be where their businesses can move faster, operate more efficiently, and attract talent that doesn't want to waste time fighting broken infrastructure. For instance, Singapore's intelligent transport system, developed over two decades ago, continuously learns and adapts, coordinating across systems rather than optimizing them individually. Barcelona's AI-driven smart grid transformation uses digital twins and predictive maintenance to scale and improve the energy network without requiring constant manual intervention, while Helsinki’s self-evolving AI agents deliver proactive services and foster citizen trust.

These cities are charting the path forward by creating urban operating systems that evolve to meet the needs of everyone. A study on the AI plans, investments, and practices of cities around the world by ServiceNow, NVIDIA, Deloitte, and ThoughtLab found that over the next three years, the share of cities surveyed that plan to use AI will nearly triple—from 18% to 48%. In other words, the race is on to be at the forefront of utilizing AI to power tomorrow's cities.