Amazon is closing its artificial intelligence lab in Shanghai, marking a significant move as it joins other US companies in reducing their research presence in China amid increasing geopolitical tensions.
The decision to withdraw from China aligns with similar actions taken by other major US tech firms like IBM and Microsoft, which have also reduced their research and development activities in the country due to heightened scrutiny from US officials regarding AI initiatives linked to China.
Wang Minjie, a scientist at the Shanghai lab set up by Amazon Web Services in 2018, announced on social media that his team is being disbanded as part of strategic changes due to the ongoing tensions between the US and China.
Reflecting on his experience, Wang mentioned in a WeChat post that he was fortunate to lead his team during a time when foreign research labs in China flourished.
He noted that they had produced over 100 academic papers and developed an open-source framework for neural networks that utilized graph data, contributing nearly $1 billion in revenue for Amazon.
This closure of the Shanghai lab coincides with Amazon’s global workforce reductions. CEO Andy Jassy recently informed employees that the rise of AI technology could result in job losses throughout the company.
According to Amazon, the decision to shut down the lab was made to focus resources on teams that would have the most significant impact, affecting about a dozen employees in the process.
In 2022, Amazon reported having over 10,000 employees in China, with its AWS division at one point employing more than 1,000 staff members in the country.
The majority of Amazon’s cloud services in China are aimed at serving multinational corporations operating there, as well as local Chinese tech companies that rely on AWS for their international operations.
Collaboration opportunities for AI researchers based in China with their counterparts abroad are increasingly limited due to US export restrictions on advanced chips and cloud services, which are intended to prevent China from accessing cutting-edge technology.
Last year, IBM eliminated more than 1,000 research and development positions across various offices in mainland China. In 2024, Microsoft also proposed relocating hundreds of its Chinese employees working in cloud and AI, as the US continued to impose limitations on China’s access to sensitive technologies.
In 2023, Amazon shut down its Chinese ebook store, following its earlier exit from the ecommerce market in 2019 due to fierce competition from local companies like Alibaba and Pinduoduo.
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