Chinese tech firms are scrambling to hire more artificial intelligence (AI) talent, especially anyone with a track record of success, amid a shortage of top AI brains in the country, according to local media reports and industry data.
Moonshot AI, one of the country’s top AI start-ups, has recruited Tan Xu, the former principal research manager for the Machine Learning Group at Microsoft Research Asia. The Beijing-based company called Tan the “industry’s top audio technology and machine learning expert”.
“[Tan] will work with the team to research and develop more advanced and useful intelligent assistants for Kimi users,” the company said in a statement on Friday, referring to its Kimi AI chatbot.
Other Chinese firms are ramping up similar efforts to enlist top industry experts to help build rival services. TikTok parent ByteDance is undertaking an aggressive recruitment programme targeting talent from AI start-ups such as 01.AI, co-founded by former Google China head Lee Kai-fu, and Beijing-based Seq-AI, according to local media reports.
ByteDance’s latest high-profile hire is Zhou Chang, an AI scientist from Alibaba Group Holding, according to local media. Zhou was one of the key researchers behind Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen large language model (LLM). ByteDance declined to comment. Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
