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....
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