"Why Didn't He Stay in the US?"... The Choice of the 34-Year-Old Chinese AI Prodigy Who Shocked Wall Street

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A 34-year-old Chinese researcher, who earned his PhD from a prestigious American university but chose to return to his homeland, is shaking up the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

On July 20 (local time), Yonhap News reported—citing U.S. economic media outlets Business Insider and Bloomberg—that "Yang Zelin (age 34), the founder of the Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI that simultaneously stunned Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the U.S. with the ultra-large open-weight (open-parameter) model Kimi K3, has become the center of attention." Born in 1992, Yang’s decision to return to China and successfully found a company, despite being well positioned to settle in the United States, has drawn particular note.

Yang Zelin, the founder of Moonshot AI, is giving a speech at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Conference held in Beijing, China, last March. Photo by Reuters Yonhap News Agency

Recently, a user’s question—"Yang Zelin earned a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S., so why didn’t he stay there?"—has attracted widespread attention on X (formerly Twitter).

Yang Zelin, originally from Guangdong Province in southern China, studied computer science at Tsinghua University before moving to the United States, where he received his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Contrary to widespread expectations that he would join a Big Tech company after graduation, Yang returned to China, prioritizing his ambition to establish his own company. He had gained recognition in the U.S. industry through his work at Facebook AI Research and Google’s deep learning research unit, Google Brain. Even Apple had reportedly shown keen interest in recruiting him. Papers published during his doctorate studies are still regarded as pivotal achievements in large language model (LLM) research.

Analysts suggest that Yang’s return to China and subsequent startup founding align with the Chinese government’s nationwide push to nurture and support STEM talent. In an interview with local Chinese media in March, Yang said, "Over the past decades, China has built the world’s best talent system. From compulsory education through high school, university, and PhD level, China can cultivate people with the world’s most formidable research drive, and the foundation of such a system is already being established."

Some speculate that "the U.S.’s stringent immigration policies may have influenced his decision to return." However, Professor Rus Salakhutdinov, who supervised Yang's doctoral studies at CMU, wrote on his X account, "Yang absolutely had opportunities to stay in the U.S. if he wanted to. Even Apple reached out to recruit him, but he preferred to return to his home country." He added, "Apple executives even suggested that he could work from their Beijing office, but Yang's commitment to returning and starting his own company was unwavering."

Chinese startup 'Moonshot AI' has shocked the market by launching the 'Kimi K3' model. Photo by AFP Yonhap News

Yang Zelin founded Moonshot AI in Beijing in 2023. Just three years later, on July 17, he launched the Kimi K3 model, which shocked the world. Moonshot AI has stated that the Kimi K3 outperforms all competing models in overall capability—except for Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6. K3 boasts 2.8 trillion parameters, an unprecedented scale for an open-weight model, according to industry assessments.

The shockwaves felt in the market are said to rival the “DeepSeek shock” caused by the rise of generative AI from Chinese startups in January last year. At that time, the DeepSeek inference model R1 jolted the market, leading to a drop in Nvidia’s market capitalization of about USD 590 billion (approximately KRW 810 trillion) in a single day. Some analysts are now characterizing the release of K3 as sparking a similarly intense “DeepSeek moment.”

This has led to increasing comparisons between Yang Zelin and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. While Liang Wenfeng is a homegrown Chinese talent without U.S. study experience, both share the distinction of being researcher-founders. Their approach stands out as a contrast to so-called "star CEOs" who seek the spotlight, instead drawing attention by taking a different path.

Building on the success of the Kimi K3, Moonshot AI is reportedly pursuing an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange within six months. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg reported that the company recently distributed an official resolution to shareholders seeking approval for a Hong Kong listing.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.