Can China dominate AI exports, too?

Jul 23rd 2026|SHANGHAI|5 min read

When driverless taxis start cruising the cantons of eastern Switzerland early next year, the invisible driver will be Chinese. PostBus, a Swiss public-transport company, has teamed up with Apollo Go, a robotaxi operator owned by Baidu, a Chinese tech giant. The project is one of dozens that have popped up over the past two years where the passengers are Singaporean, Slovakian or Saudi, but the hardware and data behind the steering wheel come from China.

China’s physical artificial-intelligence firms are racing overseas. More than 70 of them have set up operations abroad and another 20 or so are preparing to, according to EqualOcean, a Chinese research firm. Many, such as Neolix, an autonomous logistics group, are already operating in dozens of countries. They are leaving their American rivals in the dust when it comes to foreign expansion. Companies such as Waymo, an autonomous-cab firm owned by Alphabet, focused on cracking the domestic market and are just starting to roll into other countries.