World's Top AI Talent Is Choosing China Over the U.S.

The world's top AI talent is choosing China over the United States. According to a recent report by Carnegie China, a think tank under the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, titled "Who Is Winning the Global AI Talent Race?", researchers analyzed 10,280 authors whose education and career records could be verified among the 25,677 authors of 2025 papers from NeurIPS, the world's most prestigious AI conference. They found that 4,174 researchers (40.6%) now work in China, surpassing the 3,514 (34.2%) based in the United States. After China and the U.S., the preferred destinations for top AI talent were Europe (706, 6.9%), South Korea (487, 4.7%), the United Kingdom (312, 3.0%), and Singapore (271, 2.6%).

The rankings of institutions attracting top talent have also shifted. In 2022, Google ranked first, followed by Tsinghua University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft, Meta, Peking University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Three of the top 10 were companies, and excluding two Chinese universities, eight were in the United States.

By 2025, however, the order had changed. Peking University and Tsinghua University took first and second place, while the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) rose to third. They were followed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, MIT, Stanford, Google, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Zhejiang University, and UIUC. Five of the top 10 institutions were now Chinese universities, while the U.S. — counting both universities and companies — was down to four.

The report also assessed South Korea. It noted that "Asia outside China — namely South Korea and Singapore — has achieved remarkable results in the field of AI talent," adding that "South Korea recorded the second-highest talent retention rate at 77%, and KAIST ranked third."