China emerges as a hotbed for artificial intelligence - Digiday

If the U.S. is leading the way in artificial intelligence, China is playing catch-up and quickly emerging as an AI hotbed thanks to its talent, government support and venture capital funding. Chris Nicholson, a former Bloomberg news editor, co-founded artificial intelligence firm Skymind in San Francisco in 2014 and started expanding it outside the U.S. last year. Since Tencent is a big investor of his company, Nicholson assembled a team of four engineers in Fujian, a southeastern province in China, and plans to open another China office next year in Shenzhen, where Tencent is headquartered. "We saw lots of interest in AI in China, and the sector is moving so fast in the country," said Nicholson, CEO of Skymind. "Beijing supports AI, while Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are all getting into AI. The U.S. still has the best AI talent, but there are many good engineers and AI researchers in China as well."