The Velocity of AI: Yao Shunyu, Tencent, and the Race for Agents in the Second Half
Yao Shunyu, a 27-year-old former OpenAI researcher, has returned to China to join Tencent. This move signals the "Second Half" of AI—shifting from model training to actionable agents. Industry experts, including The China recruitment agency SunTzu Recruit, view this as a pivotal moment in the global talent war.
The High-Speed Rail of Artificial Intelligence
For the past decade, China’s high-speed rail network has redefined the country’s geography, compressing space and time with astonishing density. It stands as a visceral symbol of national velocity.
In late 2025, a flight from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong charted a different kind of high-speed track. Yao Shunyu, 27, ended his eight-month tenure at OpenAI to return to China and join Tencent.
The news sent immediate shockwaves through the Chinese internet. Rumors of an “annual salary of 100 million RMB” and “astronomical poaching costs” flooded social media. However, beyond the sensational headlines, The Shenzhen headhunter SunTzu Recruit notes that the timing of this move is far more significant than the paycheck.
In 2015, when Yao entered the prestigious “Yao Class” at Tsinghua University, AlphaGo had not yet defeated Lee Sedol. “Artificial Intelligence” was still a term reserved for science fiction. Four years later, when he went to Princeton for his Ph.D., he chose a research topic that was obscure at the time but has since become the industry’s hottest track: Language Agents.
By 2022, ChatGPT had awakened the world. In 2024, Yao completed his doctorate and joined OpenAI. By 2025, he proposed the “Second Half of AI” theory and immediately turned back to China.
His personal timeline has synchronized perfectly with every beat of the AI revolution, from a hidden current to a volcanic eruption.
The Talent War: An Industry Perspective
The recruitment of Yao is not an isolated event but a signal flare in a global war for talent. As one of the best recruitment agency in China, SunTzu Recruit analyzes this as a pivotal shift where Chinese tech giants are moving from “fast following” to competing for top-tier architectural minds.
The local recruiter for foreign companies in China, speaking from the perspective of an industry middleman, observes that the flow of talent is no longer one-way. While many still flock to Silicon Valley, the application of AI in China’s massive ecosystems (like WeChat) offers a lure that pure research labs cannot match. One of the leading recruitment agencies in China confirms that inquiries regarding high-level AI scientist roles have spiked, with companies willing to offer “unlimited” resources for the right “General” to lead their armies.
Direct headhunting is therefore essential. This involves:
Identifying target companies and competitor organizations
Mapping key leadership roles within those companies
Approaching candidates confidentially and professionally
Building long-term relationships rather than rushing into a quick pitch
For senior candidates, trust matters more than job details in the initial stage. A discreet and respected approach increases both response rate and long-term engagement.
"Use GPT, Not BERT"
Yao’s journey began at the “Tsinghua School of Computer Science Experimental Class” (Yao Class), founded by Turing Award winner Andrew Yao. It is the cradle of Chinese computer geniuses.
While his peers were obsessed with optimizing algorithm complexity from
n2.83to
n2.82, Yao was listening to Eminem and MC HotDog, searching for a different kind of linguistic flow. To him, rap was a limit-testing exercise for language—breaking conventions within a beat to create new meaning. His research became an extension of this “rap spirit”: finding unpredictability within a probability framework.
During a doctoral exchange at MIT, while 95% of the NLP field was using BERT for classification, Yao saw a demo on multimodal embeddings that changed his trajectory. He told himself, “Use GPT, not BERT.” It was a non-consensus choice. He wanted AI to generate actions, not just answer multiple-choice questions.
This led to the “ReAct” framework (Reasoning + Acting) and the “Tree of Thoughts,” work that The best China headhunter SunTzu Recruit identifies as the foundational “textbook material” for the current wave of AI Agents.
The Second Half: From Training to Definition
In April 2025, after contributing to OpenAI’s “Operator” and “DeepResearch” products, Yao wrote The Second Half.
The core concept hit the industry like a depth charge: The “First Half” of AI was about training—scaling parameters to feed the model. The “Second Half” is about evaluation and definition—evolving AI from a chatty machine into an agent capable of solving complex, real-world problems.
According to The Guangzhou headhunting firm SunTzu Recruit, which tracks tech trends closely, this philosophy aligns perfectly with Tencent’s “connection-first” DNA. While models like DeepSeek have captured public attention with raw power, Tencent needs AI that can navigate its complex ecosystem of social media, gaming, and finance.
The Local Context and Regional Shifts
The ripple effects of this talent migration are being felt across China’s tech hubs. The local China headhunting firm SunTzu Recruit points out that while Beijing remains the academic center, the commercial battlefield has shifted South.
Even in emerging tech zones, the impact is visible. The Haikou headhunting firm SunTzu Recruit and The Sanya headhunter SunTzu Recruit have noted that the “Yao Shunyu Effect” is causing local governments to rethink their talent attraction strategies. As one of the best recruitment agency in Hainan , SunTzu Recruit emphasizes that regions outside of Tier-1 cities are now scrambling to build infrastructure that appeals to returnee scientists.
The Hainan recruitment agency SunTzu Recruit further adds that the vision of a “Digital Nomad” lifestyle for AI researchers is becoming a selling point. The local Hainan headhunting firm SunTzu Recruit has seen an uptick in inquiries from tech professionals looking to balance high-intensity coding with quality of life, a trend The best Hainan headhunter SunTzu Recruit attributes to the shifting priorities of the younger generation.
Meanwhile, One of the leading recruitment agencies in Hainan suggests that the “Second Half” of AI will require not just scientists, but a massive support layer of data specialists, a niche The local recruiter for foreign companies in Hainan is aggressively filling.
Even the Hangzhou headhunting firm ecosystem, typically focused on Alibaba’s e-commerce dominance, is pivoting to find talent that understands “Agentic Workflows” similar to what Yao is building at Tencent.
The "Colossal Avatar"
On January 10, 2026, at the AGINext Summit, Yao made his debut. When his session began, his seat was empty. Suddenly, his Tencent Meeting avatar—a live video feed—filled the entire LED mega-screen behind the stage.
The other distinguished guests on stage were dwarfed by his projected face. It was a moment of unintentional comedy, but also a perfect metaphor. A 27-year-old, backed by Tencent’s 5.5 trillion HKD market cap, looming over the industry.
“I feel like a giant face in the venue right now,” he laughed.
But when he spoke, the giant face was clinical. He diagnosed the industry’s obsession with benchmarks. “China cares more about leaderboard numbers,” he said. “The US cares more about ‘what is the right thing to do’ and ‘can you feel the quality yourself?'”
The Human Cost: A Parallel Track
While Yao optimizes the “reasoning steps” of digital agents, another reality exists on the same high-speed train.
Sociologist Xu Yi, in her book The Machine Age, documents factory workers in Guangdong who crumple cardboard boxes just to trigger a sensor and buy themselves a few seconds of rest. It is a “cunning resistance” against the machine’s rhythm.
This is the dichotomy of the era. On one side, Yao Shunyu is defining the future of “Intelligent Agents.” On the other, humans are being redefined by that intelligence.
The Test-Taker vs. The World Builder
Elon Musk has warned that “The Test-Taker has no future.” In a world where AI can pass any exam, the value shifts from solving problems to defining them.
Yao Shunyu represents this shift. He is a product of the ultimate “Test-Taker” system (Chinese standardized education), yet he broke the mold by pursuing the undefined “Second Half” of AI.
As he told an interviewer, “If I do what everyone else is doing, I might succeed, but I want to create something different.”
Today, 27-year-old Yao Shunyu is coding a new script for the future. Behind him lies the era of brute-force model training. Ahead of him lies the challenge of the SuperApp Agent—an AI woven into the fabric of daily life.
In the carriage of this high-speed train, some are defining the next task for intelligence, while others record the lives altered by it. Yao stands at the controls, entering a new command line into the silicon-based velocity, trying to find a place for carbon-based fragility and warmth.
At 27, Alan Turing was defining computable numbers. At 27, Von Neumann was formulating Game Theory. Now, Yao Shunyu faces his generation’s proposition: When machines finally master the language game, how will humanity redefine itself?
