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China’s biggest tech group is building an artificial intelligence team in Silicon Valley, seeking to hire top US talent despite Washington’s efforts to curb the country’s development of advanced technology.
Alibaba, ByteDance and Meituan have expanded offices in California in recent months, seeking to poach staff from rival US groups that could help them in the race to profit from generative AI.
The push comes despite US efforts to prevent his work. The Chinese group has been hit by a US ban on the export of top-end Nvidia AI chips, which are essential for developing AI models.
There are currently no restrictions on US-based entities related to or owned by Chinese technology companies accessing high-end AI chips through data centers located in the US.
However, the Commerce Department proposed introducing rules in January that would require cloud providers to verify the identities of users who train AI models and report their activities.
Alibaba is hiring an AI team in Sunnyvale in California’s San Francisco Bay Area and has reached out to engineers, product managers and AI researchers who have worked at OpenAI and the largest US technology group, according to three people familiar with the matter.
China’s largest e-commerce group has posted a recruitment advertisement on LinkedIn for applied scientists, machine learning engineers and product marketing managers in the US. The team will focus on Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group’s Accio search engine for merchants, another person added.
One of Alibaba’s recruiters emailed tech workers in the U.S. saying the Chinese e-commerce company plans to spin off its California AI team into a separate startup, according to two people familiar with the matter. Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment.
One former researcher at OpenAI said it had been bombarded with messages from Chinese tech companies – including approaches from food delivery platforms Meituan and Alibaba – trying to learn more about their experience at the company as well as job opportunities.
In recent months, Meituan has built a team in California after executives grew concerned about losing out on AI, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Chief executive Wang Xing has tapped co-founder Wang Huiwen to return to the company to lead a new generative AI team called GN06, which is exploring AI-related opportunities, including menu translation features and AI companions, according to one of the people.
Some team members split their time between the Bay Area and Beijing, the person added. Chinese media site 36Kr first reported the news that Wang was in charge of Meituan’s new AI unit. Meituan did not respond to a request for comment.
TikTok owner ByteDance has the most established AI footprint in California, with multiple teams working on different projects. One research team is focused on integrating AI features into TikTok. It also has a group of researchers working on Doubao’s large language model, along with colleagues in China and Singapore, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Employees in California report to Zhu Wenjia, who is responsible for model development and is primarily based in Beijing. He previously led product and engineering at TikTok. ByteDance did not respond for comment.
Smaller Chinese AI start-ups have also made a footprint in the US, recruiting engineers with experience working in leading research labs and companies in the region.
Wu Yuxin, one of the founders of Moonshot AI, is based in San Francisco, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Meta, Cruise and multi-modal research at Google Brain, before founding the Beijing-based unicorn.
He is currently working on a large multimodal model at Moonshot, which has a popular AI chatbot called Kimi that has gained traction in China, according to people familiar with the matter and the website. Moonshot did not respond to a request for comment.
Baidu, which operates China’s largest search engine, used to run one of Silicon Valley’s leading AI research labs, employing top scientists and engineers working in areas including speech recognition and autonomous driving.
At its peak in 2017, Baidu employed several hundred people in its US research and development center, with high-profile leaders including Adam Coates and Andrew Ng holding leadership positions.
An exodus of senior staff due to internal conflicts at the company and deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing has prompted Baidu to scale back operations there, according to several people familiar with the matter.
