Alibaba Group Holding has donated an undisclosed sum of money to China’s prestigious Tsinghua University to “contribute to the cultivation of high-quality AI talent”, as the nation rallies around efforts to embrace the development and use of the advanced technology.
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The donation would go to Tsinghua’s Wuqiong College, or Boundless College, a new school created in May to train the country’s top artificial intelligence undergraduates with a focus on core AI innovations and applications, according to a statement on the Tsinghua website. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The move comes as the country is facing an AI talent shortage. A report by job recruitment platform Liepin estimated that China has a supply gap of five million AI professionals.
Tsinghua created four new colleges in May, including Wuqiong, to train “world class” AI talent who would be in service of the nation’s key priorities and economic development needs. The Wuqiong college has so far recruited about 150 students.
Established in 1911, Tsinghua University has risen to be among the top universities in the world. Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm, ranked it seventh in terms of engineering and technology, ahead of Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology.
At a ceremony on Tuesday, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said the company “firmly believes real technological revolution begins with the gathering of top talent”, and that it was committed to supporting the development of the college by leveraging the strengths of both sides in talent, technology and ecosystem collaboration.