[News] Chinese Tech Giants Ramp Up Silicon Valley AI Talent Hunt amid U.S. Restrictions

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According to Storm Media, citing Financial Times, several Chinese tech companies are reportedly accelerating efforts to establish AI research and development teams in Silicon Valley. They are offering lucrative incentives to attract top American talent, aiming to strengthen their R&D foundation ahead of potential stricter restrictions on Chinese firms under the Trump administration.

The Financial Times report points out that companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Meituan have been expanding in California over the past few months, actively headhunting experienced professionals from U.S. competitors. Their goal is to catch up in the competitive race for generative AI development.

The report highlights that the reason these Chinese companies rely on their U.S.-based offices to undertake these efforts is closely tied to existing U.S. regulations. The U.S. government prohibits the export of cutting-edge NVIDIA AI chips to Chinese firms, but these chips are essential for developing AI models, and the inability to access them poses a major obstacle for R&D.

To bypass the restrictions, Chinese tech firms or their subsidiaries have been acquiring high-end AI chips under the name of their U.S.-based data center. The report points out that this loophole has not yet been closed by U.S. regulations.

Alibaba’s Ambitions in Silicon Valley

According to the report from Financial Times, citing sources, Alibaba is currently hiring for its AI team in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have not only posted public job advertisements but have also actively approached engineers, product managers, and AI researchers with experience at companies like OpenAI and other major U.S. tech firms.

The report notes that this R&D team will focus on advancing Alibaba’s AI search engine, “Accio,” and that the company intends to turn the California AI team into an independent startup based in California.

Meituan’s AI Expansion in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Meituan, initially known as a food delivery platform, is also expanding its team in California, as the report notes. CEO Wang Xing has invited co-founder Wang Huiwen to return and lead the effort to build a dedicated AI R&D team, focusing primarily on menu translation functions and AI assistants. The new team is directly overseen by the company’s founders.

ByteDance Leads in Chinese Company’s AI Operations in the U.S. 

As for ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, its U.S. AI operations are more advanced than those of Alibaba and Meituan. The report indicates that the company already has multiple teams working on various projects, including one focused on integrating AI features and another, a collaboration between employees from China and Singapore, developing a large language model named “Doubao.”

Baidu’s Scaled-Back U.S. Presence

The report also mentions that Baidu, China’s largest search engine operator,  previously operated an AI lab in Silicon Valley, employing top scientists and engineers to work on projects such as speech recognition and autonomous vehicles.

According to the report, at its peak in 2017, Baidu’s U.S. R&D center employed hundreds of people. However, due to internal conflicts within the company and worsening U.S.-China relations, Baidu has significantly scaled back its U.S. operations, as the report notes.

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(Photo credit: Alibaba)