Organizations shaping AI

JD.com is a Chinese e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing, founded in 2004 by Richard Liu, with research arms working on AI, big data, and autonomous logistics.

Chinese computer-vision company (Face++) where Jian Sun served as chief scientist.

Major public research university in Nanjing, China, founded in 1902 and part of the C9 League.

Major public research university in Xi'an, China, founded in 1896 and part of the C9 League, known for engineering.

Major public research university in Wuhan, China (HUST), known for engineering, medicine and computer science.

Pony.ai

Pony.ai is an autonomous-driving company founded by James Peng and Tiancheng Lou, with operations in China and the US and a NASDAQ listing in 2024. It develops robotaxi and robotruck systems.

Renmin University of China

Its Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence connects technical research with the university's humanities and social-science strengths, including work on reasoning, data analysis, and socially beneficial AI.

Shanghai AI Laboratory

Major Chinese research institute producing open models and tools, including the OpenMMLab and InternLM projects.

Chinese startup building multimodal generative models, known for the Vidu video-generation model.

Major public research university in Nanjing, China, founded in 1902 and part of the C9 League.

Autonomous-mobility company developing full-stack Level 4 technology and driverless RoboVans for urban and industrial logistics. Its vehicles operate across public- and closed-road delivery environments in several international markets.

Beijing public research institution established in 2024 by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission and led by Tie-Yan Liu. Trains AI doctoral students with partner universities and incubates frontier research across science, robotics, and medicine.

Enterprise AI company whose platforms help organizations build and deploy predictive, generative and decision-making systems across sectors including finance, manufacturing, retail and energy.

Chinese real-estate listings startup, founded in 2009 in Beijing and backed by SIG China; notable as the venture Zhang Yiming ran before founding ByteDance.

Baichuan

Baichuan is a Beijing-based AI company founded by Sogou founder Wang Xiaochuan. One of China's AI Tigers, it develops Baichuan-series large language models and the Baixiaoying assistant, with backing from major Chinese technology investors. The company has increasingly emphasized healthcare and medical AI applications.

Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence

Beijing-based AI research institute, also known as BAAI, known for large-scale open research programs and models such as the WuDao series.

Beijing Hulu Technology was a Beijing software company engaged in research and development for streaming-media technology. Public biographical filings document it as a former employer of engineers who later worked on large-scale video and AI systems.

BIGAI studies general intelligence through cognitive science, computer vision, robotics, multi-agent systems and machine learning, pursuing systems that can understand, reason and act across changing real-world tasks.

DJI develops camera drones, stabilization systems and sensing platforms used in filmmaking, agriculture, infrastructure inspection, conservation and public safety.

Researches machine-learning systems, robotics, computer vision, and AI for education, connecting technical work with digital learning and intelligent-industry applications.

Public university in Hangzhou, China, focused on electronics, information technology and engineering.

Hesai develops lidar sensors and 3D-perception systems for driver assistance, autonomous vehicles, robots and industrial applications.

Quantitative investment manager that applies mathematical models and machine learning to trading. Its founder Liang Wenfeng later used the firm's computing resources and profits to support the creation of DeepSeek.

Horizon Robotics

Chinese company designing AI chips and software for autonomous driving and edge devices.