Amazon Web Services Shuts Down AI Research Lab in Shanghai Amid US-China Tensions

AWS closes China AI research center

Nvidia's Jensen Huang just had a win with his argument that the world needs China's AI brains, now this Amazon Web Services has closed its AI lab in Shanghai, China. AWS confirmed the closure in an email to The Register in which spokesperson Brad Glasser used the same language the cloud colossus sent us when we inquired about last week's layoffs, to wit: "After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we've made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS. We didn't make these decisions lightly, and we're committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition. These decisions are necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers." For what it's worth, AWS also used the last two sentences to describe layoffs it made in April 2024. AWS announced its Shanghai Lab in September 2018 and <a target="_blank" href="appointed NYU Shanghai Professor of Computer Science Zhang Zheng as its director, with a remit to "lead the company's advanced research and development of deep learning." The center's web page states it focuses on four activities: News of the lab's closure emerged in a social media post by Wang Minjie, one of the scientists who worked at the center. His post described the time of the lab's foundation as a "golden age" for foreign-owned AI labs in China. That assessment may be apt, as Microsoft last year offered to move some R&D staff from China to the USA and IBM reportedly did likewise. Nvidia, however, is all-in on Chinese AI research with co-founder Jensen Huang arguing that AI will advance faster if the world taps the top talent in the Middle Kingdom. That attitude recently was a factor in the Trump administration's recent decision to reverse its ban on all GPU exports to China. Back to Amazon, which in addition to backing out of AI research in China has already closed the app store and e-book store it ran in the Middle Kingdom. It's also worth remembering that AWS's presence in China encompasses just two cloud regions, a tiny number given China's population. Beijing of course requires foreign tech companies to operate through local partners, an arrangement that can't be easy for AWS given its investment in proprietary datacenter technology. ®

Amazon closes Shanghai AI research lab in latest cost-cutting move

The front desk of the Amazon office is pictured in New York, May 1, 2019. Amazon is shuttering its research lab in Shanghai focused on artificial intelligence development, the latest belt-tightening move by the e-commerce and cloud computing giant. Wang Minjie, an applied scientist at the lab, wrote in a WeChat post earlier this week that Amazon disbanded the team due to "strategic adjustments amid U.S.-China tensions." Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement that the company "made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams" in its Amazon Web Services unit. The Financial Times was first to report on the lab closure. Amazon announced layoffs at AWS last week, with U.S. teams focused on marketing and training and certification among those that were impacted.

Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI lab: source

US tech giant Amazon has shut down its artificial intelligence research lab in Shanghai, a source with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to AFP. News that the lab, part of cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS), has closed comes with AI at the forefront of a tech race between China and the United States. In a screenshot of a WeChat post widely circulated on Chinese social media this week, Wang Minjie, a scientist at the lab, said its disbanding was "due to the strategic adjustment between China and the United States." AWS announced job cuts across its operations last week, with some reports putting the losses at hundreds. Amazon declined to confirm the Shanghai lab's closure directly when contacted by AFP. "We've made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS," spokesman Brad Glasser said in a similar statement to the one released in response to the broader job losses. "These decisions are necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers." A dedicated AWS China webpage for the lab seen on Wednesday by AFP was no longer accessible on Friday. According to an archive of the page, the lab was established in autumn 2018, with part of its remit to "actively foster collaboration with the research community." Other US tech firms such as Microsoft and IBM have scaled back their research divisions in China recently, as the tech competition between Washington and Beijing shows no sign of abating.

AWS reportedly shutters AI research lab in Shanghai - SiliconANGLE

Amazon Web Services Inc. has reportedly closed an artificial intelligence lab that it operated in Shanghai. The Financial Times reported the move today. The Amazon Web Services AI Shanghai Lablet, as the shuttered facility was known, opened in 2018. It's unclear how many staffers the center employed. The researchers' areas of focus included natural language processing and AI development tooling. AWS' Shanghai AI lab played a key role in creating the Deep Graph Library, an open-source tool for training graph neural networks. Those are AI models optimized to process graphs. A graph is a data structure that can describe how different business records relate to one another, which is valuable for many analytics projects. A former applied scientist at the lab reportedly announced its closure in a post on WeChat, China's most popular social network. The Financial Post cited the researcher as saying that the lab "was being dissolved due to strategic adjustments amid U.S.-China tensions." Earlier this month, the U.S. rescinded rules that prevented Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. from exporting AI chips to China. However, officials have indicated that they could ramp up scrutiny of such chip sales going forward. A newly released policy paper from the White House recommends that the U.S. government "pursue creative approaches to export control enforcement." It's also possible the closure of the AI lab is related to a recent round of layoffs at AWS. According to Reuters, the Amazon.com Inc. unit has cut "at least hundreds" of roles. It's believed that AWS' training and certification team was among the affected business units. "After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we've made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS," an Amazon spokesperson told Nikkei Asia today. Other companies are also scaling back their AI work in China. The Financial Times cited sources as saying that McKinsey & Co., a management consulting firm, has instructed its business unit in China to avoid taking on generative AI projects. The unit employs more than 1,000 workers. Earlier this year, AWS rival Microsoft Corp. reportedly extended relocation offers to 700-800 of its staffers in China. According to the Wall Street Journal, the employees who received the offers work on AI and cloud projects. The staffers reportedly represent about 10% of the workforce at Microsoft's Asia Pacific research and development group, which is largely based in China.

Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI research lab, FT says

Amazon is shutting down its Shanghai artificial intelligence lab, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. Amazon's decision to shut the lab comes amidst rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, with the U.S. increasing its scrutiny of American companies operating in China. Wang Minjie, a scientist in the Shanghai lab, said his team was "being dissolved due to strategic adjustments amid US-China tensions," the newspaper said, citing a post on WeChat. Amazon Web Services (AWS) set up its Shanghai Lab in 2018. While the headcount at the AWS Shanghai research lab is unclear, the FT report said, AWS at its peak had more than 1,000 staff in China. The report comes as the tech giant slashes jobs globally, joining a growing list of firms, including Microsoft and Meta, who have announced layoffs this year as they increase their reliance on artificial intelligence.

Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI research lab, FT says

(Reuters) -Amazon is shutting down its Shanghai artificial intelligence lab, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. Amazon's decision to shut the lab comes amidst rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, with the U.S. increasing its scrutiny of American companies operating in China. Wang Minjie, a scientist in the Shanghai lab, said his team was "being dissolved due to strategic adjustments amid US-China tensions," the newspaper said, citing a post on WeChat. Amazon Web Services (AWS) set up its Shanghai Lab in 2018. While the headcount at the AWS Shanghai research lab is unclear, the FT report said, AWS at its peak had more than 1,000 staff in China. The report comes as the tech giant slashes jobs globally, joining a growing list of firms, including Microsoft and Meta, who have announced layoffs this year as they increase their reliance on artificial intelligence. (Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)