Chinese engineers born in the 1990s are driving AI innovation on both sides of the Pacific. China-born engineers (CBCs) and American-born Chinese (ABCs) play pivotal roles in US and Chinese tech firms.
US tech giant Meta acquired AI startup Manus for $2 billion. Manus, dubbed “the second DeepSeek,” was founded by Xiao Hong, born in 1992, who studied computer engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology before embarking on a series of entrepreneurial ventures. A South Korean media article reported that Chinese engineers born in the 1990s are becoming a key force in the global AI industry. This includes both China-born Chinese (CBCs) who grew up in China and participated in the development of Chinese AI technologies, and American-born Chinese (ABCs) who were active in Silicon Valley.
Reports indicate that China produces 1.3 million engineering graduates annually, and this massive talent pool has fostered AI technology comparable to that of US tech giants, as well as numerous unicorn startups. For example, Wang Xingsheng, founder of Unitree Robotics, born in 1990, holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Zhejiang University of Technology and Shanghai University; Pan Zizheng, a core researcher at DeepSeek, and Wang Guan, founder of the robotics startup Sapient, are also among the young CBCs (Consumer Capitalists) who have garnered significant attention. Some CBCs have taken on senior positions at US tech giants after studying in the US, or returned to China to start their own businesses.
Yang Zilin, CEO of Moonshot AI, born in 1992, graduated from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University and went to the US, earning a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. He previously worked as a researcher at Google and returned to China to start his own business in 2023. Zhang Guodong, born in 1995, studied in China and Canada before joining Google DeepMind. He later joined Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI as a founding member, participating in the development of the AI model Grok.
ABCs (American-born Chinese) are mostly second-generation members of Chinese immigrant families. Driven by high educational expectations from their parents, they excelled academically from a young age, are familiar with American culture, and effectively utilize Silicon Valley’s networks, capital, and entrepreneurial environment. Alexandr Wang, head of Meta AI, whose father is a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was known as a “mathematical genius” from a young age. He taught himself programming, founded Scale AI at 19, and became the “youngest self-made billionaire” at 24. After the company was acquired by Meta, he became its AI head. The report argues that this phenomenon demonstrates the long-term investment of the Chinese community in science and technology education and reflects the transnational mobility of Chinese talent in the global AI competition. However, the decoupling of US-China technology policies is having a real impact on the career development of Chinese engineers.
Source: USA, Chosun