Amazon is set to dissolve its Shanghai AI Research Institute, the company’s last overseas AI lab under AWS, citing a “strategic adjustment” between China and the US, according to a social media post by Wang Minjie, an applied scientist at the lab. Amazon confirmed staff reductions to Chinese media outlet Caixin, but did not directly confirm a full closure. Established in 2018 during China’s inaugural World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the lab focused on research in graph neural networks and contributed to open-source projects like the Deep Graph Library. The institute, led by NYU Shanghai professor Zhang Zheng, remained small and never officially disclosed its headcount. The closure comes as Amazon continues global layoffs amid earnings pressure, with AWS revenue growth slowing for three consecutive quarters. The move also follows similar pullbacks by US tech giants including IBM and Citigroup, which have recently downsized their China-based R&D operations, signaling a broader trend of reduced American tech investment in China amid geopolitical tensions. [Caixin, in Chinese]
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