AI talent has undergone three major migrations: Baidu took the lead, the “Six Little Tigers” differentiated, and Tencent implemented “replacing old with new”.
Starting from 2023, affected by stock price pressure, strategic adjustments, and organizational adaptation issues, companies such as Baidu, ByteDance, and several startups (“The Six Little Tigers”) engaged in large-scale recruitment of talents in the pre-training field. At the beginning of 2025, with strategic reductions in operations by companies like BaiChuan Intelligence and ZeroOneAll Things, the industry experienced a second wave of departures. By the end of 2025 to 2026, the industry trend shifted towards post-training aspects such as inference and large model agents, and some former pre-training talents moved to more pure research teams.
Domestic AI talent has experienced three major migrations: Baidu led the outflow first, followed by the differentiation among the “Six Tigers” companies, and Tencent implemented the strategy of “replacing old talent with new ones”. Starting in 2023, Baidu, ByteDance, and the “Six Tigers” companies大规模 recruited pre-trained talents due to stock price pressure, strategic adjustments, and organizational fit issues. At the beginning of 2025, the strategic contraction of BaiChuan Intelligence and ZeroOne万物 triggered a second wave of departures. From the end of 2025 to 2026, the industry shifted to recruiting post-training talents in areas such as reasoning and Agents, with some pre-trained talents flowing to more specialized research teams.