Jimmy Wales voiced concerns that other continental capitals could offer more attractive terms for developers once Britain leaves the European Union.
Mr Wales spoke ahead of London Tech Week next month, where he is a keynote speaker, saying he worries that financial firms were already looking to locate elsewhere.
A Thomson Reuters Brexit study found that 31 per cent of chief financial officers at some of the UK’s biggest firms said they were preparing to move staff from the UK — an increase of 10 per cent since last year.
Speaking from the Shard office of his WikiTribune news site, Mr Wales said: “London is a very important city in the global tech scene, but I worry about the future, about Brexit and what that’s going to bring for London’s tech community in particular.
“I worry that if we become a hostile place for immigration from Europe, then that’s not good. We depend on talented people thinking London is a great place to move to and live, and have a great career.
“But London’s not alone — it has competition as a city. Berlin is super-cool and has a thriving tech scene.
“In the past we could rely on English as a language and London — as a financial powerhouse — as an anchor with a strength in fintech.
“So it worries me when I see big banks investing more in Frankfurt.
“I’m a pathological optimist… but what’s kind of alarming about this is the depth of the constitutional change.
“The magnitude of this is so large it’s hard for people to get their heads around it.”
Mr Wales also said he was sceptical of government attempts to regulate social media firms over the spread of extremist material, harassment and copyright infringement.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock has said tech giants will face greater regulation following claims that details of 50 million Facebook users had been harvested for political use.
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Mr Wales said: “I’m sceptical because politicians generally don’t understand the internet very well. So they attempt to regulate something they don’t understand and often don’t solve the problem, but just create other problems. At the same time, some of the problems they aren’t even touching are big and international: identity theft and information security.
“There’s so little co-operation between different jurisdictions and it’s going to take a long time to figure that out.”
London Tech Week will run from June 11 to 17 and includes the TechXLR8 show at ExCeL in Docklands with robot and drone demonstrations. The show, from June 12 to 14, features 300 exhibitors and start-ups, plus eight demonstration zones and 150 speakers.
