China and the CIA Are Competing to Fund Silicon Valley's AI Startups

A trio of new investments in Silicon Valley machine-learning startups shows that the U.S. intelligence community is deeply interested in artificial intelligence. But China is investing even more in these kinds of U.S. companies, and that has experts and intelligence officials worried. Founded to foster new technology for spies, the 17-year-old In-Q-Tel has also helped boost commercial products. Compared to a venture capitalist firm whose early-stage investments are intended to make some money and get out, the nonprofit's angle is longer term, less venture, more strategic, according to Charlie Greenbacker, In-Q-Tel's technical product leader in artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, analytics, and data science. "Our model is to put a little bit of pressure at the right spot to influence a company to make sure it develops things that are useful to our customers," said Greenbacker, who estimated that their investments in a given startup generally amount to about one of every 15 dollars the company has.