Top AI Talent Now Chooses China Over the United States

40.6% Choose China, 34.2% Choose the United States

A new survey has found that China has overtaken the United States to become the region most chosen by the world's top artificial intelligence (AI) talent.

According to the report "Who Is Leading the Global AI Talent Race?" published on September 26, 2026, by Carnegie China, a think tank under the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among a sample of 10,280 researchers who published papers at NeurIPS, the world's most prestigious AI conference, last year, 4,174 (40.6%) were working in China and 3,514 (34.2%) in the United States. Following China and the United States, the next preferred regions for AI talent were Europe (706 people, 6.9%), South Korea (487 people, 4.7%), and the United Kingdom (312 people, 3.0%). In 2022, the US-China ratio was 46 to 27; last year, it shifted to 34 to 41, with China surpassing the United States.

The ranking of institutions attracting AI talent has also changed. In 2022, Google ranked first, followed by Tsinghua University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft, Meta, Peking University, University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with eight out of these ten institutions located in the United States. However, last year, Peking University and Tsinghua University took the first and second spots, with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) rising to third place. In fourth was Shanghai Jiao Tong University; fifth, MIT; sixth, Stanford University; seventh, Google; eighth, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC); ninth, Zhejiang University; and tenth, UIUC. Among the top ten, five institutions were in China and four in the United States.

When looking at the locations where bachelor's degrees were earned, the proportion of talent produced by China has increased. In the 2022 survey, 46.3% of AI talent graduated from Chinese institutions; 19.8% from US institutions; followed by Europe (7.2%), India (6.2%), and South Korea (4.8%). However, in last year's survey, the proportion from China exceeded half at 57.4%, while that of the United States dropped to 13.3%. The shares for Europe and India also decreased to 6.4% and 4% respectively, while South Korea's share rose to 5.7%.

The report notes, "More Chinese researchers are staying in China than before," and explains, "It has become easier for Chinese graduates to find jobs in the rapidly growing Chinese AI industry, and it has become more difficult for Chinese graduate students, especially those in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, to come to the United States due to tightened visa restrictions."

The report also adds, "Asian countries outside of China, namely South Korea and Singapore, have made remarkable achievements in cultivating AI talent. South Korea not only recorded the second-highest retention rate for AI talent at 77%, but also saw its leading research institution KAIST jump 12 places from its 2022 ranking to reach third place among top AI talent-producing institutions."

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