More elite AI researchers now work in China than in the US, study finds

China has overtaken the United States as the country where the most elite AI researchers work, according to a study by Carnegie China. The think tank is part of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2025, 41% of the top researchers it tracked worked in China and 34% in the US.

Three years earlier the US led. In 2022, 46% worked in the US and 27% in China.

How the study counted

The authors, Damien Ma and Binyi Yang, looked at researchers who had papers accepted at NeurIPS 2025, the field’s most selective conference. The study calls these researchers the “Navy Seals” of the field. There were 25,677 authors on 5,823 papers. The study traced more than 10,000 of them with full career histories, from first degree to current employer.

The data came from OpenReview, the platform NeurIPS uses for submissions. Researchers report their own career histories there. The authors said AI coding tools helped process the data, with human checks on the results.

More Chinese researchers are staying at home

China is now the largest source of elite AI talent. In 2025, 57% of the group took their first degree in China, up from 46% in 2022.

More of them are staying in China to work, the study found. It pointed to job openings in China’s AI industry. It also pointed to tighter US visa rules, especially for Chinese graduate students in science.

The US still draws talent from abroad. Among AI researchers working in the US, the share with a Chinese undergraduate degree rose by four percentage points.

Peking and Tsinghua lead the ranking

Peking University and Tsinghua University now rank first and second as workplaces for the researchers, with South Korea’s KAIST third. Google held first place in 2022. The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University both moved into the top 20.

Europe lost ground. ETH Zurich and the University of Oxford dropped out of the top rankings, according to the study. Europe kept 60% of its own talent, against 89% for the US.

In Washington, the Trump administration has proposed a $103,265 fee on new H-1B visas. Chinese AI and chip firms, meanwhile, are handing out shares to keep their engineers. Last week, Xi Jinping told Donald Trump that the two countries can jointly prevent AI misuse.