Kimi Founder Returns From CMU PhD To Build Chinese AI Company
Yang turned down an Apple job to build Moonshot
Entities: Zhilin, Russ Salakhutdinov
A post from @rsalakhu is making a public claim about why Kimi founder Zhilin returned from Carnegie Mellon to build an AI company in China. Based on what is public so far, the safest read is still the post's own account and the limited source context around it. For readers, that means focusing on what was claimed, who put it into the conversation on X, and what still needs firmer confirmation before anyone treats it as settled.
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kimi’s founder & ceo got his phd at cmu. why didn’t he stay in america?!
I think there's a lot of confusion and misinformation about Zhilin's visa, H1B lottery, immigration, and why he left the U.S. Zhilin had many opportunities to stay in the U.S. if he wanted to. In fact, I was on an email thread with a senior Apple exec (Tim Cook's reports) asking whether Zhilin would consider joining Apple. I said that he wanted to go back to his homeland. The response was, well, we have an office in Beijing if he'd like to join there. But Zhilin was quite determined to go back and build a startup. I remember him telling me that if he didn't at least try starting his own company, he would regret it for the rest of his life. I respect that, and he was right. Many of my international PhD students do choose to stay in the U.S. Of course the U.S. immigration process can be quite intimidating and uncertain, even for superstar PhD graduates from places like CMU.
kimi’s founder & ceo got his phd at cmu. why didn’t he stay in america?!