Chinese tech groups construct AI teams in Silicon Valley

China’s biggest technology groups are building artificial intelligence teams in Silicon Valley, seeking to hire top US talent despite Washington’s efforts to curb the country’s advancement of the cutting-edge technology.

Alibaba, ByteDance and Meituan have been expanding their offices in California in recent months, seeking to poach staff from rival US groups who could assist them make up ground in the race to earnings from generative AI.

The push comes despite US efforts to stymie their work. Chinese groups have been hit by a US ban on exports of the highest-complete Nvidia AI chips, which are crucial for developing AI models.

There are currently no restrictions on US-based entities related to or owned by Chinese tech companies accessing high-complete AI chips through data centres located in the US.

However, the Department of Commerce proposed introducing a rule in January that cloud providers have to verify the identity of users training AI models and update their activities.

Alibaba is recruiting an AI throng in Sunnyvale in California’s San Francisco Bay Area and has approached engineers, product managers and AI researchers who have worked at OpenAI and the biggest US tech groups, according to three people familiar with the matter.

China’s biggest ecommerce throng has posted recruitment advertisements on LinkedIn for an applied scientist, machine-learning engineer and product marketing manager in the US. The throng will focus on Alibaba International Digital Commerce throng’s AI-powered search engine Accio for merchants, another person added.

One Alibaba recruiter emailed tech workers in the US saying the Chinese ecommerce business planned to spin off the Californian AI throng into a divide commence-up, according to two people familiar with the matter. Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment.

One former researcher at OpenAI said they had been bombarded with messages from Chinese tech companies — including approaches from food delivery platform Meituan and Alibaba — trying to discover more information about their encounter at the business as well as offering job opportunities.

In the history few months, Meituan has been building out its throng in California after executives grew alarmed that it was falling behind on AI, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Chief executive Wang Xing has tapped co-founder Wang Huiwen to profit to the business to navigator a recent generative AI throng called GN06, which is exploring AI-related opportunities, including menu translation features and AI companions, according to one of the people.

Some throng members are splitting their period between the Bay Area and Beijing, the person added. Chinese media site 36Kr first reported information that Wang was in fee of a recent AI unit in Meituan. 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 throng is concentrated on integrating AI features into TikTok. It also has a throng of researchers working on its Doubao large language model, alongside colleagues in China and Singapore, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

California-based employees update to Zhu Wenjia, who is in fee of model advancement and is primarily based in Beijing. He previously led product and engineering at TikTok. ByteDance did not respond to a comment.

Smaller Chinese AI commence-ups have also established a footprint in the US, recruiting engineers with encounter working at leading research laboratories and companies in the area.

Wu Yuxin, one of the co-founders of Moonshot AI, is based in San Francisco, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Meta, Cruise and then on multi-modal research at Google Brain, before co-founding the Beijing-based unicorn.

He is now working on large multimodal models at Moonshot, which owns a popular AI chatbot called Kimi that has gained traction in China, according to people familiar with the matter and his website. Moonshot did not respond to a request for comment.

Baidu, which operates China’s biggest search engine, used to run one of the leading AI research labs in Silicon Valley, employing top scientists and engineers working on areas including talk recognition and autonomous driving.

At its peak in 2017, Baidu employed several hundred people at the US research and advancement centre, with high-profile leaders including Adam Coates and Andrew Ng holding leadership positions.

An exodus of leading staff due to internal dispute at the business and deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing prompted Baidu to significantly reduce its operation there, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.