China’s biggest technology groups are building artificial intelligence teams in Silicon Valley, seeking to hire top US talent despite Washington’s efforts to curb the country’s development of the cutting-edge technology. Alibaba, ByteDance and Meituan have been expanding their offices in California in recent months, seeking to poach staff from rival US groups who could help them make up ground in the race to profit from generative AI. The push comes despite US efforts to stymie their work. Chinese groups have been hit by a US ban on exports of the highest-end Nvidia AI chips, which are crucial for developing AI models. There are currently no restrictions on US-based entities related to or owned by Chinese tech companies accessing high-end AI chips through data centres located in the US. However, the Department of Commerce proposed introducing a rule in January that cloud providers have to verify the identity of users training AI models and report their activities. Alibaba is recruiting an AI team in Sunnyvale in California’s San Francisco Bay Area and has approached engineers, product managers and AI researchers who have worked at OpenAI and the biggest US tech groups, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Full report : Alibaba, ByteDance, and Meituan have been expanding their AI teams in Silicon Valley in recent months, despite US efforts to stymie Chinese companies.