China’s AI rise draws top engineers back from US

A growing wave of elite artificial intelligence researchers and engineers is returning from the United States to China, reshaping the global balance of talent in advanced technology, according to industry figures and recruitment specialists, Financial Times reports.

In technology hubs including Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, a “quiet but significant shift” is underway, with leading scientists leaving Silicon Valley to take up senior roles in Chinese tech firms such as ByteDance and Tencent. The trend raises questions about why many of the architects of AI systems are now departing the US, long considered the global centre of technological innovation.

Among recent returnees are Wu Yonghui, who left Google DeepMind to lead ByteDance’s next-generation large language model development, and Yao Shunyu, who departed OpenAI to join Tencent’s AI division. Roger Jiang, a senior scientist formerly at OpenAI, has launched a robotics start-up in Shenzhen, while Zhou Hao moved from Google DeepMind to Alibaba. Three AI headhunters operating between China and San Francisco said they have helped relocate more than 30 US-based researchers to China in the past year, compared with only a handful previously.

The shift reflects both structural opportunity and changing global conditions. “You can also see an increasing amount of China’s brightest kids choosing to stay home, instead of pursuing [a] PhD in the US,” said Steve Hsu, a professor at Michigan State University, adding that this is linked to “US immigration policies” as well as “significantly more opportunities in China these days”.

China’s rapid deployment of AI across sectors—from autonomous transport in Beijing to financial applications in Shanghai—is also a key draw. “If you are in anything related to hardware, especially robotics, you have to be literally in Shenzhen,” Hsu said, citing the city’s concentration of more than 100 robotics companies.

Recruiters say compensation is increasingly competitive. Pay for top AI researchers in China has “surpassed Silicon Valley standards when adjusted for tax and cost of living,” they said, alongside improved lifestyle conditions.

However, analysts note the United States still retains advantages. “The circulation of capital is the most efficient,” said Lu Zhang of Fusion Fund. “You can’t find this anywhere else in the world.”

Despite the return flow, talent continues to move both ways, with Chinese engineers also being recruited by US firms. A Tsinghua University official said about 20% of engineering graduates now apply for US PhDs, down from 50% before the pandemic.

By Vafa Guliyeva