Chinese entrepreneur Yang Zhilin’s AI milestone triggers social media debate as to why he left the US and founded his startup in China.
As Chinese AI startup Moonshot released Kimi K3, a new model touted to be almost as advanced as Claude Fable 5 or GPT 5.6 Sol, a major debate erupted on social media as to how this could have been the US’s success and not China’s, as Moonshot founder Yang Zhilin did his PhD from the US but then went back to China.The debate started after Russ Salakhutdinov, who was the supervisor of Zhilin at Carnegie Mellon University, congratulated him on the latest Kimi release. “It feels like just yesterday Zhilin was graduating from my lab at CMU, jointly co-advised with William Cohen. Not only did he complete his Ph.D. in just four years, but he also made truly fundamental contributions to ML during his time at CMU,” Salakhutdinov wrote on X.”What a spectacular career! Congrats again Zhilin, and thank you and the entire Kimi team for everything you’re doing for the open-source community,” he wrote.The post went viral with social media users raising questions on why Zhilin did not stay in the US.Indian-origin tech entrepreneur Ankit Gupta said America’s “moronic visa policy” must have been one of the factors why Moonshot is a Chinese startup and not an American one. “The fact that we don’t staple a green card to every AI PhD completed in America is stupid. would be more logical to seize their passports and force them to stay,” Gupta wrote.
Who is Yang Zhilin?
Zhilin is a Chinese entrepreneur, co-founder of Moonshot AI. He came to the US for his PhD. During his PhD studies, Yang worked at Google Brain and Meta Platforms. After his PhD, he went back to China to focus on his startup company though he could have pursued postdoctoral opportunities ar Stanford University or MIT. Apple also tried to recruit him, it was reported. But he decided to go back to China.”As a student on an F-1 visa, it’s incredibly hard to start a company unless you know a US citizen who can help satisfy the employer-employee relationship requirements. The system rewards getting a job because that’s how taxes are collected. Building a startup takes years, but the visa rules aren’t designed with that reality in mind. The F-1 visa system is built around employment, not entrepreneurship. It’s broken for founders,” one wrote.The debate comes at a time when the US administration is tightening the F-1 visa more by making it time-bound. F-1 visa holders are now allowed to stay in teh US for four years. They have to seek extension if they want to extend their stay which will go through the USCIS.
