US Investors Plowed Over $40 Billion into Chinese AI Industry Despite Sanctions, Report Says

US investors were mostly interested in facial recognition, medicine and robotics, a recently unveiled report by a tech policy group at Georgetown University has revealed, as quoted by a British news agency.

From 2015 to 2021, 167 US companies invested roughly $40.2 billion in the Chinese AI industry, according to a recent report by researchers from Georgetown University. American investments accounted for almost 37% of cash injections in this industry in the region for the mentioned period.

In terms of the number of transactions, it turns out that US firms were actually involved in one in five transactions with the Chinese AI sector. The leaders in terms of the number of deals were GGV Capital (43 transactions), Qualcomm Ventures (13 transactions) and Intel Capital (11 transactions), according to the report.

However, as the authors of the study note, the most curious thing is that some investments were made after President Joe Biden imposed strict sanctions against Chinese hi-tech. In the summer of 2022, the US passed the CHIPS and Science Act which was described by political experts as a new US strategy of "actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry."

GSR Ventures invested in a Chinese speech recognition project, despite the fact that the company was blacklisted by the US administration. Mostly American investors were interested in such technologies as facial recognition, medicine and robotics. However, some technologies, as the authors of the report note, can be directly used for military purposes.

US political scientists expect that the Biden administration will issue new rules this year that will further restrict investment in the Chinese economy, primarily in hi-tech amidst increasing Beijing-Washington rivalry.