At the 2025 Global Digital Economy Conference, the first-ever global AI talent ranking was released, which attracted widespread attention. Based on an in-depth analysis of nearly 100,000 papers over the past decade, the ranking lists the Top 100 talents in the AI field globally, with Chinese scientists occupying significant positions, demonstrating their outstanding contributions and influence in this field.
The release of the ranking once again confirms the industry's view: "Whoever wins the Chinese scientists will win the AI world." Among them, He Kaiming, one of the pioneers of deep learning, is known as the "father of CV-level Nobel Prize work." His concept of residual learning broke through the long-standing "vanishing gradient" problem in neural networks, greatly promoting the development of deep learning. Recently, he officially joined Google DeepMind while retaining his position as an associate professor at MIT.
In addition to He Kaiming, the ranking also includes other renowned Chinese scientists such as Zhang Xiangyu, Ren Shaoping, and Tian Qi, whose contributions in fields like computer vision and autonomous driving are equally remarkable. Zhang Xiangyu participated in the development of the ResNet series models, which have become core technologies in many visual competitions worldwide. Ren Shaoping is a key figure in NIO's autonomous driving technology. Moreover, Tian Qi plays an important role in Huawei's AI product line and the MindSpore framework.
Notably, the background of the ranking mentioned that in recent years, AI talents from within China have rapidly risen, gradually changing the global AI ecosystem centered around Silicon Valley. Emerging companies like DeepSeek are adopting localized training strategies, emphasizing the introduction of young talents, and striving to build strong local teams. This change indicates that China's competitiveness in the AI field is gradually increasing.
At the same time, the competition for top talents among global tech companies is intensifying. Companies such as Meta and ByteDance are actively offering opportunities to Chinese scientists, even offering annual salaries as high as $100 million to attract talent. This phenomenon reflects that AI talents have become a focal point for tech giants, and Chinese scientists play an indispensable role in this process.
According to a research report by Dongbi Technology, although U.S. companies still lead in AI academic publications, the rapid development and growing research capabilities of Chinese companies are gradually narrowing this gap. In the future, China's AI talents and technologies may have a profound impact on the global technology landscape.