TMTPOST -- DeepSeek, once an obscure startup, has shocked the world with its remarkably advanced and much cheaper-to-produce models. Behind its meteoric rise, its acquisition of talents, in particular those who studied in the United States, shows a shift in career peferences.

Even as American tech firms increasingly recruit Chinese interns for their solid engineering and data-processing skills, many of these students, when offered full-time positions, choose to return to China. “Many Chinese students are no longer that interested in full-time jobs in America,” said one AI researcher at a leading U.S. tech company. Rising anti-immigration sentiment and visa restrictions have further complicated recruitment efforts in Silicon Valley, pushing some of China’s brightest minds to return to China.

Their career choices contrast sharply with previous generations of Chinese tech talent, who flocked to Silicon Valley for the prestige, higher salaries, and proximity to top innovators. Today, however, China’s domestic AI industry is maturing, with major players like Alibaba and emerging startups such as StepFun, Minimax, and 01.AI offering competitive opportunities for young engineers.

DeepSeek, in particular, has cultivated a unique workplace culture that attracts top talent. According to a recent report from 36Kr, DeepSeek’s compensation packages surpass those of ByteDance, and the company offers a more flexible work environment than many of its competitors. Employees are encouraged to pursue projects of their own choosing, while the company provides ample access to computing power. “We are working on the most challenging problems, and thus we are attractive to them,” said Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek. DeepSeek’s commitment to open-source research has also fueled its reputation and engendered a sense of pride among employees, some of whom have gained significant followings on social media platforms like X, where they share their work and excitement.

The decision made by Zizheng Pan, a young AI researcher from China, at the close of his 2023 internship at Nvidia marks a pivotal moment in the evolving global tech landscape. Faced with a choice between staying in Silicon Valley with one of the world’s most influential chipmakers or returning to his home country to join a fledgling startup in eastern China, Pan opted for the latter, according to a news story by Rest of the World.

His mentor at Nvidia, Zhiding Yu, reflects on Pan’s move, noting that these types of decisions are becoming increasingly common among China’s brightest minds. “Many of our best talents come from China, and these talents don’t have to succeed only in a U.S. company,” Yu wrote on social media last month.

Pan’s move reflects a growing trend among Chinese AI graduate students who study in the United States, as an increasing number of young engineers are opting to go back to China rather than seek opportunities in Silicon Valley.

This shift, according to people familiar with the Chinese tech scene, is driven by a combination of factors: lower living costs, proximity to family, and the ability to assume critical roles early in one’s career. DeepSeek has been particularly successful in attracting talent, drawing young graduates and interns from prestigious Chinese universities, including Tsinghua and Peking University. The company’s success is, in part, a testament to the strength of China’s burgeoning AI ecosystem. Despite U.S. restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductor technologies to China, companies like DeepSeek continue to innovate, leveraging local talent to rival Silicon Valley’s best.

According to a 2023 report by the Chicago-based think tank MacroPolo, nearly half of the world’s leading AI researchers completed their undergraduate studies in China. Universities and state-backed labs in China, along with research arms of American tech giants like Microsoft Research Asia, have produced a sizable cohort of local talent with the expertise to challenge U.S. tech companies. Junxiao Song, a core contributor to DeepSeek’s R1 model, is one such example. Song, who completed his Ph.D. at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has been described by his Ph.D. adviser, Daniel Palomar, as a persistent and mathematically-oriented researcher. Palomar has praised Song’s strong analytical ability, noting that his former student was known by the nickname “dashi,” or “great master.”

Deli Chen, a DeepSeek researcher, shared his enthusiasm for the company’s breakthroughs on social media: “All I know is we keep pushing forward to make open-source AGI a reality for everyone,” he wrote, referencing the success of the R1 model. Pan echoed similar sentiments, expressing pride in the team’s accomplishments. “This moment is absolutely phenomenal to me,” Pan wrote, as the R1 model topped a popular chatbot leaderboard.

Yu Zhou, a professor at Vassar College who has studied China’s tech industry, sees parallels between the rise of DeepSeek’s researchers and the early days of China’s internet startups in the early 2000s. Just as those entrepreneurs were inspired by global tech giants like Google and Microsoft, today’s AI engineers are motivated by the innovations of companies like OpenAI. “America thinks China’s trying to unseat America, but the truth is that young people were inspired by new technology developments such as OpenAI,” Zhou said. However, these Chinese entrepreneurs face a distinct challenge: the scarcity of the world’s most advanced Nvidia chips. “When you don’t have resources, all you hav is your brain power,” Zhou added.

As DeepSeek’s success demonstrates, China’s growing AI ecosystem is not only attracting top-tier talent from abroad but also developing cutting-edge technologies that could reshape the global AI landscape. Silicon Valley’s dominance is facing increasing competition, and as China’s AI talent pool expands, the future of the industry looks more and more like a global competition—one that is being led from both coasts of the Pacific.