AWS closes China AI research center, citing boilerplate 'business priorities'
(2025/07/24)
- Reference: 1753325946
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/07/24/aws_closes_shanghai_ai_lab/
- Source link:
Amazon Web Services has closed its AI lab in Shanghai, China.
AWS confirmed the closure in an email to The Register in which spokesperson Brad Glasser used the same language the cloud colossus sent us when we inquired about [1]last week’s layoffs , to wit: “After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we’ve made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS. We didn’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition. These decisions are necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers.”
For what it’s worth, AWS also used the last two sentences to describe layoffs it made in [2]April 2024 .
[3]
Amazon also sent us the following explanation:
"We closed the AI Lab in China as part of a broader global effort across AWS to review our organization and priorities. This decision was about prioritizing resources in teams having the greatest impact. To place this particular change into context, around a dozen employees were impacted."
AWS announced its Shanghai Lab in September 2018 and [4]appointed NYU Shanghai Professor of Computer Science Zhang Zheng as its director, with a remit to “lead the company’s advanced research and development of deep learning.”
The center’s [5]web page states it focuses on four activities:
Developing and contributing to open source projects, such as the popular Deep Graph Library (DGL) framework
Basic research and applications in the field of graph neural networks
Empowering customers through AWS services such as SageMaker DGL and Neptune ML
Actively cooperating with the academic community
News of the lab’s closure emerged in a social media post by Wang Minjie, one of the scientists who worked at the center. His post described the time of the lab’s foundation as a “golden age” for foreign-owned AI labs in China.
That assessment may be apt, as Microsoft last year [6]offered to move some R&D staff from China to the USA and IBM [7]reportedly did likewise.
[8]Laid-off AWS employee describes cuts as 'cold and soulless'
[9]Atlassian migrated 4 million Postgres databases to shrink AWS bill
[10]When it comes to cloud, it's China against the world
[11]Alibaba and Tencent clouds see demand for CPUs level off, GPUs accelerate
Nvidia, however, is all-in on Chinese AI research with co-founder Jensen Huang [12]arguing that AI will advance faster if the world taps the top talent in the Middle Kingdom. That attitude recently [13]was a factor in the Trump administration’s recent decision to reverse its ban on all GPU exports to China.
Back to Amazon, which in addition to backing out of AI research in China has already [14]closed the app store and [15]e-book store it ran in the Middle Kingdom.
[16]
It's also worth remembering that AWS’s presence in China encompasses just two cloud regions, a tiny number given China’s population. Beijing of course requires foreign tech companies to operate through local partners, an arrangement that can’t be easy for AWS given its investment in proprietary datacenter technology. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/18/aws_sheds_jobs/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/03/amazon_aws_layoffs/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aIZNOjAeBIxAZGLNCQQx0gAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20190421125807/https://shanghai.nyu.edu/news/professor-zhang-zheng-head-amazons-new-ai-lab-shanghai
[5] https://www.amazonaws.cn/ailab/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/microsoft_china_staff_relocate/
[7] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/27/business/china-ibm-layoffs-us-tensions-intl-hnk
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/18/aws_sheds_jobs/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/07/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/21/china_cloud_market/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/20/tencent_alibaba_cloud_lenovo_results/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/21/jensen_huang_h20_ban_criticism/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/us_allows_nvidia_china_sales/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/amazon_appstore_china_closes/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/03/amazon_kindle_leaves_china/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aIZNOjAeBIxAZGLNCQQx0gAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
AWS confirmed the closure in an email to The Register in which spokesperson Brad Glasser used the same language the cloud colossus sent us when we inquired about [1]last week’s layoffs , to wit: “After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we’ve made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams in AWS. We didn’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition. These decisions are necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers.”
For what it’s worth, AWS also used the last two sentences to describe layoffs it made in [2]April 2024 .
[3]
Amazon also sent us the following explanation:
"We closed the AI Lab in China as part of a broader global effort across AWS to review our organization and priorities. This decision was about prioritizing resources in teams having the greatest impact. To place this particular change into context, around a dozen employees were impacted."
AWS announced its Shanghai Lab in September 2018 and [4]appointed NYU Shanghai Professor of Computer Science Zhang Zheng as its director, with a remit to “lead the company’s advanced research and development of deep learning.”
The center’s [5]web page states it focuses on four activities:
Developing and contributing to open source projects, such as the popular Deep Graph Library (DGL) framework
Basic research and applications in the field of graph neural networks
Empowering customers through AWS services such as SageMaker DGL and Neptune ML
Actively cooperating with the academic community
News of the lab’s closure emerged in a social media post by Wang Minjie, one of the scientists who worked at the center. His post described the time of the lab’s foundation as a “golden age” for foreign-owned AI labs in China.
That assessment may be apt, as Microsoft last year [6]offered to move some R&D staff from China to the USA and IBM [7]reportedly did likewise.
[8]Laid-off AWS employee describes cuts as 'cold and soulless'
[9]Atlassian migrated 4 million Postgres databases to shrink AWS bill
[10]When it comes to cloud, it's China against the world
[11]Alibaba and Tencent clouds see demand for CPUs level off, GPUs accelerate
Nvidia, however, is all-in on Chinese AI research with co-founder Jensen Huang [12]arguing that AI will advance faster if the world taps the top talent in the Middle Kingdom. That attitude recently [13]was a factor in the Trump administration’s recent decision to reverse its ban on all GPU exports to China.
Back to Amazon, which in addition to backing out of AI research in China has already [14]closed the app store and [15]e-book store it ran in the Middle Kingdom.
[16]
It's also worth remembering that AWS’s presence in China encompasses just two cloud regions, a tiny number given China’s population. Beijing of course requires foreign tech companies to operate through local partners, an arrangement that can’t be easy for AWS given its investment in proprietary datacenter technology. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/18/aws_sheds_jobs/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/03/amazon_aws_layoffs/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aIZNOjAeBIxAZGLNCQQx0gAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20190421125807/https://shanghai.nyu.edu/news/professor-zhang-zheng-head-amazons-new-ai-lab-shanghai
[5] https://www.amazonaws.cn/ailab/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/microsoft_china_staff_relocate/
[7] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/27/business/china-ibm-layoffs-us-tensions-intl-hnk
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/18/aws_sheds_jobs/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/07/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/21/china_cloud_market/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/20/tencent_alibaba_cloud_lenovo_results/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/21/jensen_huang_h20_ban_criticism/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/us_allows_nvidia_china_sales/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/amazon_appstore_china_closes/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/03/amazon_kindle_leaves_china/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aIZNOjAeBIxAZGLNCQQx0gAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Korev
This reminds me of drug discovery, loads of pharma went in to curry favour with the Chinese government, opened big labs and then shut them a few years later. The end result is the West trained a generation of Chinese scientists at our expense and built shiny buildings for them. You can now see a number of drug candidates coming out of China.
'bluey
No ill feeling towards China - I wish them the best - but what the West gifted them in money, intellectual property and training is unbelievable.
AI Kid U Not .... and continually denying it aids and abets the stealth of it being proven so.
Nvidia, however, is all-in on Chinese AI research with co-founder Jensen Huang arguing that AI will advance faster if the world taps the top talent in the Middle Kingdom.
It would very clearly be wrong to dismiss and proclaim that argument as incorrect although AWS [Amazon Web Services] and myriad other Western centric business satellites/entities are most unlikely to ever admit top Middle Kingdom AI talent headhunters being more their valid future concern and present worry.
And that is sure to be an increasingly successful brain drain type operation as Westernised businesses seek and are recognised to be deliberately using and wilfully abusing any of their perceived and temporary advantages to the detriment of peer competitors whether East or West, North or South.
IT's a crazy world indeed ...... and getting ever stranger and more quantum entangled, and with those developments enabling lead[s] to spaces and places never before imagined possible and likely probable, a Brave and Bold NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive Virtualised World Order Program for Project Man Management.
Interesting times ahead in some very disturbing places, Simon. More anon.