- Ant Group and Baidu launched massive hiring campaigns with over 70% of roles focused on AI.
- AI job openings in China surged 12-fold in the first two months of the year.
Chinese tech giants are igniting a fierce battle for artificial intelligence talent, with companies including Ant Group and Baidu rolling out massive recruitment drives.
Ant Group announced its 2026 spring campus recruitment on Tuesday, with technical roles accounting for 85% of the total, of which over 70% are directly related to AI.
These positions focus on areas such as large language models, multimodal generation, and embodied AI, spanning multiple global cities including Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hong Kong, San Francisco, London, and Bangkok.
Baidu also announced its summer internship recruitment for the class of 2027 on Tuesday.
The company is offering over 5,000 internship offers, with more than 90% of the roles closely tied to the AI sector.
Several other tech titans have taken similar steps.
ByteDance is offering over 7,000 internship roles globally, while Tencent plans to hire more than 10,000 interns worldwide. Meituan launched its "Beidou Program" on March 2, targeting top-tier global tech talent.
AI has become the core battleground for talent in this year's spring recruitment. AI job openings surged about 12-fold year-on-year in the January to February period, according to a report by career community platform Maimai.
The average monthly salary for AI positions reached 60,738 yuan ($8,788), which is about 26% higher than the overall average for the so-called new economy sector.
($1 = 6.9100 yuan)
