China’s tech giants are recruiting high schoolers

The pitch: teens in the lab

A 17-year-old co-authoring a technical report on large language models? It has been reported that on March 16 Chen Guangyu — a high school student — was named a joint first author on a GitHub technical report from Beijing-based Moonshot AI after reportedly joining the startup’s Kimi chatbot team as a machine-learning intern last November. The report was later praised by Tesla CEO Elon Musk on X as “impressive work,” a post that sent the episode viral and ignited heated discussion on Chinese social media about when, and how, talent should be tapped.

Programs roll out across big names

This is not an isolated stunt. Tencent (腾讯) this month unveiled a summer program recruiting middle and high school students for fintech and AI projects, selecting about ten participants after rounds of tests and interviews. Domestic automaker Geely (吉利) has opened internships to students in their last year of high school with mentorship from affiliated tech CEOs, while Huawei (华为) and ByteDance (字节跳动) have run similar youth-talent initiatives in recent years. Even nonprofit efforts led by former founders have emerged; it has been reported that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming helped start a program to employ and train 16–18 year olds as reserve AI researchers.

Why firms are lowering the age bar

Why the rush for younger recruits? Company messaging frames it as breaking age and credential barriers to capture creativity and unconventional thinking. At Geely’s launch event, chairman Li Shufu argued there is “a gap between the talent companies’ need and what universities currently supply.” It has been reported that an anonymous HR staffer at an AI firm told domestic media creativity and imagination now carry weight in roles such as product management — qualities some recruiters believe appear earlier than formal credentials.

Global echoes and geopolitical pressure

This trend mirrors moves in the West — Palantir hired high-performing high-school graduates for internships in 2025, and Google cofounder Sergey Brin has said the industry often hires people without bachelor’s degrees who “figure things out on their own.” But in China the push comes against a backdrop of intensifying U.S. export controls on advanced chips and tighter technology ties with the West. Facing constraints on hardware and international collaboration, Chinese firms are increasingly investing in domestic talent pipelines, raising questions about workplace protections, educational inequality, and whether early corporate training will substitute for — or supplement — formal higher education. Critics online have already mocked the trend; supporters call it pragmatism in a talent-scarce era. Which view will win out? That remains to be seen.