US investors empowered China’s AI industry and the Beijing Army with over $40b in 6 years.

According to research released on Wednesday, American investors, including those from Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp., made up about a quarter of all investments made in Chinese artificial intelligence companies between 2015 and 2021.

The document was released by CSET, a tech coverage group at Georgetown University, at a time when American investments in semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence are coming under increased scrutiny as the Biden administration gets ready to announce new restrictions on American funding of Chinese tech companies.

According to the research, 167 American investors participated in 401 deals or nearly 17% of the investments made into Chinese AI companies over the time period.

These deals totaled $40.2 billion in funding or 37% of the total raised by Chinese AI companies during the course of a six-year period. What portion of the money came from U.S. corporations was unclear from the analysis, which used data from the information provider Crunchbase.

According to the data, GGV Capital led U.S. corporations with 43 total investments in the sector, outpacing Qualcomm Ventures and Intel Capital with 13 and 11 investments in Chinese AI enterprises, respectively.

As hawks in Washington accuse American consumers of funneling money and valuable knowledge to Chinese tech companies that would help advance Beijing’s military capabilities, the Biden administration is expected to announce an executive order this year restricting some U.S. investments in sensitive Chinese language tech industries.

According to the article, when the speech recognition company was placed on a business blacklist, American investor GSR Ventures partnered with China’s IFlytek Co Ltd, a Chinese language AI company; before China’s SenseTime, a leader in face recognition technology, was included on the same trade blacklist, Silicon Valley Bank and Wanxiang American Healthcare Investment Group made investments in Chinese AI startups.

Each company has been put on the blacklist in 2019 for alleged human rights breaches related to the persecution of Uighur Muslims, thus banning them from receiving U.S. tech exports.

The investigation confirmed that two of the largest investments were made by Goldman Sachs alone in the AI-enabled robotics company 1KMXC and by three U.S.-based venture capital firms in the autonomous cell robotics company Geek+.

According to CSET, just one Chinese AI company that received money from American investors is engaged in developing AI applications for military or public security applications.