China Leads U.S. in Top AI Talent, Study Finds

Chinese AI researchers have increasingly opted to stay and work in their home country, leading China to become the top destination for elite AI talent, according to a study by think tank Carnegie China.

The research found that the share of top AI researchers working in China rose from 27.1% in 2022 to 40.6% in 2025. The share of AI talent in the U.S. fell from 46.4% to 34.2% over the same period.

Carnegie China attributed the trend to the greater availability of jobs in China’s booming AI industry, and tighter visa restrictions for Chinese STEM graduates looking to work in the U.S. In 2025, 69% of Chinese-origin researchers, defined as those who received undergraduate degrees in the country, ended up working in China.

Carnegie China used paper authors from the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS) for its study sample. The NeurIPS cohort encompassed researchers who contribute to a broad range of technical AI research, including model advancements and computational efficiency.

China remained the leading source of AI talent globally, according to the study. The share of Chinese-origin talent increased 11 percentage points to 57% in 2025. That said, the U.S. remained by far the world’s largest magnet for AI talent, recording a gain of 2,145 researchers in 2025. And despite geopolitical tensions, the latest share of U.S.-based researchers who hold undergraduate degrees from China rose by 4 percentage points.