Major Chinese technology companies are launching programs to identify and cultivate AI talent as young as 13, as a deepening shortage of skilled engineers pushes firms to extend their recruitment pipelines well beyond university campuses. Tencent (the Chinese tech conglomerate behind super-app WeChat) began running multi-week training camps for teenagers in June, while ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming launched a nonprofit research centre in October that selects 30 students aged 16 to 18 per year as full-time AI research trainees. Automaker Geely went further by guaranteeing high school graduates a job and graduate-level pay in exchange for completing a company-designed curriculum in AI and related technologies. The moves reflect a projected shortfall of up to 5 million AI workers in China by 2030, according to McKinsey estimates, with current university pipelines expected to meet only about a third of that demand.