200,000, 300,000, 500,000... Leading internet giants are scaling up their AI scholarship programs.

Source: Jiemian Image Library

The battle for AI talents among top internet giants is gradually escalating.

Recently, major internet giants have been intensively launching AI scholarship programs, extending their talent recruitment reach from campus recruitment and social recruitment further forward to the early scientific research cultivation stage of current students.

Since September, the 2026 Baidu (BIDU) Scholarship Program and the 2026 CCF-Baidu (BIDU) Pinecone Fund Program have been launched one after another. The two programs target current students and young scholars in universities respectively, covering links including talent mining, scientific research support, industrial practice and career development, further improving Baidu (BIDU)'s long-term AI talent cultivation and connection mechanism.

In addition to financial support, the winners will also have the opportunity to conduct in-depth exchanges with Baidu (BIDU)'s core technical experts on research topics and development directions. They can also get internship and campus recruitment opportunities in Baidu (BIDU)'s core AI technical team, as well as priority recommendation for the AIDU Top Talent Program.

Since its establishment in 2013, the Baidu (BIDU) Scholarship has been held for 12 consecutive sessions, providing more than ten million yuan in scholarship support to 116 outstanding students worldwide. In 2026, the Baidu (BIDU) Scholarship Program is open for applications from Chinese current students in universities around the world, with undergraduates, master's students and doctoral students all eligible to apply, and the graduation time must be January 2027 or later. The program will select 10 winners, each of whom can receive a 200,000 yuan scientific research bonus.

Previously, ByteDance Scholarship opened global applications for the first time, with a maximum reward of 300,000 yuan.

On May 20, ByteDance announced that the application for the 2026 "ByteDance Scholarship" program was officially launched. This program opens global applications for the first time, and simultaneously increases the number of award places.

According to ByteDance, this scholarship program is expected to provide relevant benefits for more than 20 winners, including a 200,000 yuan scientific research bonus, a 100,000 yuan mentor bonus, etc. Eligible applicants are current students in universities around the world who will graduate in June 2027 or later, and their majors include artificial intelligence, computer science and technology, basic science, etc.

The ByteDance Scholarship was launched in 2021, and has cumulatively provided support for 67 young researchers so far. Most of these researchers are now active in fields such as large models, embodied intelligence, and AI for Science.

On January 30, the award ceremony of Tencent "Qingyun Scholarship" was held in Shenzhen. As a Tencent project supporting young talents and scientific research, the first phase of the "Qingyun Scholarship" selected 15 winners, and provided each winner with incentives worth a total of 500,000 yuan, including 200,000 yuan in cash and cloud heterogeneous computing resources worth 300,000 yuan.

Apart from this Qingyun Scholarship, Tencent also launched the 2025 Tencent Algorithm Competition at the end of last year, attracting more than 8,400 applicants from nearly 30 countries around the world with a 3.6 million yuan bonus pool, direct offer opportunities at Tencent, and practical combat opportunities in real advertising business scenarios.

As artificial intelligence technology accelerates its penetration into industries, the demand in the AI talent market is strong. Data from the 2025 AI Talent Mobility Report shows that from January to July 2025, the number of new AI job postings increased by more than 10 times year on year, with an average of only 2 talents competing for every 5 AI positions.

According to the "Insights on Mid-to-high-end Talent Job Hunting and Recruitment from January to February 2026" released by Maimai, the number of new AI jobs on the Maimai platform increased by about 12 times year on year, and its proportion in the total number of new economy jobs soared from 2.29% in the same period last year to 26.23%. The report from Zhaopin shows that the year-on-year growth rate of positions related to AI agents is as high as 455%.

On March 6, Tencent announced the launch of its 2026 intern recruitment, offering more than 10,000 internship opportunities around the world. On the same day, ByteDance also announced the launch of its 2026 intern recruitment, and the two top internet giants released a total of more than 17,000 internship positions.

Also in March, Alibaba's 2027 cohort intern recruitment was also launched. According to Alibaba, AI-related positions account for more than 80% of this year's campus recruitment, and seven new types of AI campus recruitment positions have been added, including AI Application R&D Engineer, AI Application Algorithm Engineer, AI Agent Optimization Engineer, etc. New employees will be deeply involved in multimodal AI topic research after joining.

The 2027 Alibaba Star Top Talent Recruitment and Cultivation Program was launched simultaneously, covering cutting-edge topics in five major fields: basic models, AI Infra, large model applications, industrial AI, and computing architecture.

On September 8, DeepSeek announced the expansion of recruitment for about 150 engineers, targeting senior back-end engineers with 2 to 10 years of work experience.

This article is from "Jiemian News", written by Jiang Yiman JYM, published by 36Kr with authorization.