Investors from the US continue to be major players in fund-raising by China’s artificial intelligence (AI) companies, despite worsening tensions between the two countries that have seen efforts by Washington to restrict Chinese access to American technology.
A report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) found that US investors participated in $40.2 billion of observed transactions with 251 Chinese AI companies during the period from 2015 to 2021, based on data sourced from Crunchbase.
This amount accounted for 37% of the $110 billion raised by all Chinese AI companies over the period.
The report further found that 91% of observed US investment transactions into Chinese AI companies arrived at the venture capital investment stages, including angel, seed and pre-seed.
Chinese investors continue to remain the leading investors in Chinese AI companies, however.
“Between 2015 and 2021, at least 71 percent of the transaction value and 92 percent of the investment transactions with no U.S. participation came from Chinese investors alone,” the report said.
