"China overtakes US in AI startup funding with a focus on facial recognition and chips"

NVIDIA watches.
And yours truly writes stuff like Jan. 15's "'Can Chinese AI Chip Makers Compete with Nvidia?' (NVDA)":

Not yet.
However...the fact China not only built the world's fastest supercomputer but did it with chips they designed and manufactured themselves, see 2016's "Milestone: China Builds The (NEW) World's Fastest Supercomuter Using Only Chinese Components (and other news) INTC; NVDA; IBM" combined with our first hit of the three cities named in: November 21, 2016 "Artificial Intelligence: What Could Derail NVIDIA? A Lab in Shenzhen; A Basement in Moscow; An Office in Bristol (NVDA)", albeit a year later:

"Sequoia Backs Graphcore as the Future of Artificial Intelligence Processors" (NVDA; INTC)

November 13, 2017
BRISTOL, England, Nov. 13, 2017 — Graphcore has today announced a $50 million Series C funding round by Sequoia Capital as the machine intelligence company prepares to ship its first Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) products to early access customers at the start of 2018....

makes one think the lab in Shenzhen idea is not as far out as it had been....

And today's headliner from The Verge:

The competition between China and the US in AI development is tricky to quantify. While we do have some hard numbers, even they are open to interpretation. The latest comes from technology analysts CB Insights, which reports that China has overtaken the US in the funding of AI startups. The country accounted for 48 percent of the world’s total AI startup funding in 2017, compared to 38 percent for the US. 

It’s not a straightforward victory for China, however. In terms of the volume of individual deals, the country only accounts for 9 percent of the total, while the US leads in both the total number of AI startups and total funding overall. The bottom line is that China is ahead when it comes to the dollar value of AI startup funding, which CB Insights says shows the country is “aggressively executing a thoroughly-designed vision for AI.”

China’s natural advantages in AI are well-documented. Compared to the US, it has a huge population (1.4 billion), which offers a wealth of data and opportunity for companies to scale quickly. Its AI sector also has the backing of a central government that’s able to quickly shift resources (as opposed to the missing-in-action White House), and the country’s looser approach to digital regulations means companies can experiment more freely....MORE 

Now, about that basement in Moscow...

More to come.