China Hosts 41% of Top AI Talent, 30-to-1 Flow Favors US
TL;DR
- China hosted 41% of top AI researchers in 2025 by NeurIPS workplace, up from 27% in 2022; the US share fell from 46% to 34%.
- For every 30 Chinese AI researchers working in the US in 2025, only one made the opposite journey to China, Carnegie's analysis found.
- At DeepSeek, 53.5% of affiliated authors had never studied or worked outside China, and more than 70% of those with US experience eventually came home.
China now hosts 41% of the world's top AI researchers by NeurIPS workplace, up from 27% in 2022, while the US share has fallen from 46% to 34%, according to a Carnegie China analysis reported by The New York Times.
The inbound traffic is thin. For every 30 Chinese AI researchers working in the US in 2025, only one made the opposite journey. At DeepSeek, 53.5% of affiliated authors had never studied or worked outside China, and more than 70% of those who did gain US experience eventually came home.
"Despite U.S.-China tensions, the number of Chinese-origin researchers working in the U.S. actually rose by four percentage points," Damien Ma, who led the Carnegie study, told the paper.
Foreign recruits cite language, academic-freedom concerns and geopolitical friction as the barriers. Even DeepSeek, which has signaled openness to foreign hires, has required Chinese proficiency from candidates.
"The danger for the U.S. is a slow erosion of its appeal to attract talent that compounds over decades," said Yingyi Ma, a sociology professor at Syracuse University.
Originally reported by nytimes.com
Read the original article →Original headline: NYT: China Struggles to Recruit Foreign AI Researchers Despite Its 41% Share of Top Talent