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China’s tech giants offer lavish year-end bonuses amid AI talent war
ByteDance is expanding its bonus pool by 35 per cent from a year earlier, as well as increasing the budget for pay rises by 150 per cent
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Top tech talent in China can expect lavish bonuses for 2025 as big tech firms from ByteDance to Tencent Holdings double down on efforts to retain and lure people with specialised skills in fields such as artificial intelligence.
TikTok owner ByteDance expanded its bonus pool by 35 per cent from a year earlier, as well as increased the budget for pay rises by 150 per cent, according to Chinese media outlet The Paper. The company also lifted pay floors and ceilings across all job levels. The increases were done to ensure the company offered globally competitive compensation, according to the report.
Shenzhen-based social media and video gaming giant Tencent Holdings was also on a hiring spree for AI-related talent, including poaching people from rivals, according to a report by US news outlet The Information. Tencent has lured several researchers from rivals by offering to double their existing salaries.
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One high-profile recruitment was Yao Shunyu, a former researcher at San Francisco-based OpenAI, who was named chief AI scientist at Tencent, reporting directly to company president Martin Lau. Yao will also lead Tencent’s AI Infra and LLM Development units and reports to Lu Shan, head of the Technology Engineering Group.
According to a report by Maimai, China’s leading professional social network, the index for new AI positions leapt 543 per cent year on year between January and October 2025, compared to a 197.8 per cent year-on-year increase in the same period in 2024. While Maimai does not disclose absolute numbers, the index represents the volume of new job postings.
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