Chinese tech giants recruit US AI and chip talent as rivalry heats up at home

Social media company ByteDance, parent firm of TikTok, is hiring nearly 100 employees in the U.S. for its artificial intelligence division Seed. Established in 2023, the team now operates research labs across the U.S., Singapore and China, Bloomberg reported.

While ByteDance is widely known for TikTok, the company has also emerged as a major AI developer. Its chatbot app Doubao, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, was China’s most downloaded AI chatbot for most of 2025.

Another tech giant, Baidu, has posted 10 job openings focused on semiconductor design at its Sunnyvale, California office. The roles include work on central processing unit development, system-on-a-chip architecture and design verification.

Workers at ByteDance office. Photo courtesy of ByteDance

Other Chinese technology firms are also recruiting U.S. talent to expand the commercialization of their AI systems.

Alibaba Group Holding is seeking a "solutions architect" in Sunnyvale, California, to support operations at Alibaba Cloud, the company’s AI and cloud computing unit.

AI firm MiniMax is recruiting "AI architects" in San Francisco as part of its overseas expansion initiative. According to the company’s job listing, these architects will "translate large model capabilities and agent frameworks into competitive commercial solutions".

The overseas hiring reflects Chinese technology firms’ efforts to strengthen their skilled workforce as competition intensifies in the country’s tech market, according to the South China Morning Post.