Carnegie: South Korea retains 77% of AI talent, KAIST now world's No.3 producer

sehoonkim418 · x · 2026-09-25

Carnegie China has released the latest edition of the Global AI Talent Tracker (v3.0), continuing MacroPolo's methodology by sampling NeurIPS paper authors. Key findings: the US and China keep extending their lead in producing and attracting top AI talent, Asia ex-China is rising, while Europe falters.

South Korea stands out with a 77% talent retention rate, the second-highest globally, and KAIST leapt twelve places since 2022 to become the world's third-highest institution for producing top AI talent. Framed via Jensen Huang's five layers of AI (energy, chips, infrastructure, models, applications), the report argues the model-layer race is essentially a proxy competition for elite researchers.

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