China and its tech giants are racing to protect their top AI talent, as competition intensifies at home and with the US.
Beijing is restricting overseas travel for AI officials at Alibaba and DeepSeek — similar to rules for academics and nuclear scientists — in an effort to secure its technology amid a heated race with Washington.
Such restrictions could undercut efforts by Chinese AI firms to retain prized engineers, Bloomberg noted, especially with a domestic talent war underway. ByteDance is offering special stock options to its AI team to prevent defections, and one Chinese robotics startup advertised an $18 million salary for a chief scientist. It mirrors Silicon Valley’s scramble for AI engineers, who are being lured by massive pay packages.