Top Chinese tech firms unveil innovative approach to boost AI talent training and hiring

As China accelerates its digital transformation, major internet companies like Alibaba, Huawei, and Kuaishou are ramping up efforts to recruit and train AI talent.

Since early 2025, these tech giants have significantly expanded their hiring initiatives, particularly in cutting-edge fields such as AI, while also launching internship and training programs to cultivate the next generation of digital professionals.

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba launched its spring recruitment campaign in February, targeting graduates from both domestic and overseas institutions who are expected to graduate between November 2025 and October 2026. The company is offering over 3,000 internship positions across a wide range of roles, including research and development, algorithms, technology, cybersecurity and product planning, with nearly half of these roles focused on AI.

In April, Huawei announced plans to recruit over 10,000 graduates in 2025, marking a double-digit growth from the previous year. The focus is on key fields such as large AI models, high-performance computing, and ecosystem development. The company will also nurture more than 5,000 interns through training programs spanning testing, cutting-edge research and development, and finance.

Meanwhile, China's short video platform Kuaishou, known internationally as Kwai, is becoming a powerful engine for inclusive job creation. According to a 2024 report by Renmin University of China, Kwai generated 43.2 million job opportunities by the end of 2024, which led to the emergence of 174 new digital professions.

The platform has innovated with livestream job fairs for real-time matching between workers and employers. For example, in a county in northeast China's Jilin Province, a local labor bureau trained 2,180 hosts for livestreaming, who then went on to help place over 35,000 workers in jobs.

The report estimates that for every 100 million yuan (about $13.9 million)  increase in livestream e-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV), around 1,200 new jobs are created.

"Livestream-based recruitment, as an emerging format in recent years, not only breaks through geographic and time constraints of traditional offline hiring but also offers job seekers more diverse options and flexibility. It effectively addresses labor shortages in sectors like manufacturing, improves the efficiency of job matching, and lowers overall recruitment costs," said Zhang Chenggang, director of the China New Employment Forms Research Center, a research institute jointly founded by the Capital University of Economics and Business and the China Employment Promotion Association.

The company aims to train 10 million people in digital skills over the next three years, focusing on emerging roles such as livestream hosts, AI application engineers, and digital marketers, the company told CGTN.