Big Technology Podcast · Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Grace Shao, an analyst and author, highlights that China's rapid progress in AI, exemplified by models like Kimi K3, is largely due to its vast pool of talented individuals, particularly in STEM fields. She notes that many leading AI researchers have Chinese heritage. Shao also points out that compute and capital constraints have forced Chinese AI labs to specialize in specific areas, such as deepseek focusing on infrastructure and efficiency, and Kimi K3 on agentic capabilities.
“I can't comment on exactly how Moonshot did it, but I'll start with a comment actually, Nathan even shared with me when we talked about after his China big big China trip when he visited all the labs. I think a lot of it's in the talent. And people are really, really shocked by the talent. And this is something we talked about as well, a year ago when deepseek, you know, came out with a whole, uh, domestically educated and domestically, you know, uh, trained talent pool. Now, I think that's something really under overlooked in right now.”
“You know, the talent pool in China right now, kind of is because the base is so big and then there's such a strong STEM education. Uh, which feeds into right now, the AI, you know, researcher realm. And then we see like the leading researchers, really, um, a lot of them, if not, you know, maybe 40% or 50% of them, are of Chinese descent or heritage. Uh, Chinese talent right now is kind of having a moment, I think.”
“They're like, look, it's not really rocket science. Um, the R&D itself requires a lot of taste and curiosity and test and error. But it does take talent. And China just has an abundance of very smart mathematicians, physicists, and what not that are going into AI.”
“Now, beyond that, what's the kind of elephant in the room and the obvious is the obvious constraint driven specialization or the compute like, you know, constraint you must say. If anything, in a way, what you've seen is a lot of these Chinese labs, um, face with compute constraint and in some ways capital constraint. They're forcing them to specialize rather than compete across every dimension.”