An average of 1,550 newcomers arrive in the Seattle area from China each year, forming close cultural and professional links between the Emerald City and the world’s most populous nation. These ties — combined with Seattle’s renowned pool of tech talent — make the area ripe for Chinese businesses to base their North American operations. Many of the country’s biggest names have engineering offices on Puget Sound — Alibaba, Huawei and Baidu — along with smaller companies offering foreign businesses a key to the huge Chinese consumer market.
Founded: 1999
Local office opened in: 2014
Located: 500 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue
Alibaba is essentially China’s answer to Amazon, an e-commerce giant which some analysts say may soon become the first Chinese company to reach a trillion dollar valuation. After opening its first office in the area within a block of the headquarters of its biggest rival, the company moved its local engineering center across Lake Washington in 2016. Legend has it that Founder Jack Ma’s first experience with the internet occurred during a visit to Seattle.
Founded: 1999
Local office opened in: 2017
Located: 10900 NE 8th Street, Bellevue
If Alibaba is China’s Amazon, Baidu is its Google. The company opened its Bellevue office after acquiring a local startup called Kitt.ai, which built tools to create and run natural language chatbots. That’s just the latest of 10 acquisitions Baidu has made since 2004. The company’s U.S. headquarters is located in Sunnyvale (pictured above), but Baidu President Ya-Qin Zhang told Geekwire that his company’s presence in the Pacific Northwest may eventually grow to include a “couple hundred” people.
Founded: 1987
Local office opened in: 2016
Located: 15395 SE 30th Place, Bellevue
Huawei designs and builds smartphones and app building infrastructure, as well as providing cloud and information technology services. Although the company lacks the name recognition enjoyed by its competitors in the United States, Huawei recently surpassed Apple in worldwide sales. The company opened its first Seattle area office in downtown Kirkland in 2016, but has since moved to larger digs in Bellevue.
Founded: 1998
Local office opened in: 2017
Located: 10900 NE 8th Street, Bellevue
Tencent is the company behind WeChat, the Chinese messaging service that is second only to Facebook in user numbers. Tencent's North American headquarters are in Silicon Valley, though reports emerged last year that the company would open an artificial intelligence research center in the Seattle area. According to Geekwire, the center is located in Bellevue's Plaza Center building, though Tencent's careers page currently lists engineering, IT and sales roles in Seattle.
iPinYou
Founded: 2008
Local office opened in: 2016
Located: 4040 Lake Washington Boulevard NE, Kirkland
Headquartered in Beijing, iPinYou helps international advertisers reach Chinese consumers. Their real-time advertising architecture is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, patented technologies in audience profiling and targeting and algorithmic buying systems. The company claims to possess the largest demand-side platform in China.
Founded: 2016
Local office opened: 2016
Located: 3006 Northup Way, Bellevue
Clobotics produces the hardware and software for technology that sends autonomous drones to inspect wind turbines for damage, takes high-resolution photos, filters the data using artificial intelligence algorithms and uploads it to a cloud-based portal for customers to peruse. The company has headquarters in Bellevue and Shanghai along with a Beijing office, and just recently raised an $11 million Series A, bringing its funding total to $21 million.
Founded: 2001
Local office opened in: 2005
Located: 5808 Lake Washington Boulevard NE, Kirkland
With offices across North America and a U.S. headquarters in Kirkland, iSoftStone is a technology consultancy specializing in digital transformation services. Founded in Beijing, the company specializes in communications, finance, insurance and retail, as well as smart city technology. iSoftStone employs around 350 people in its North American offices, as well as over 18,000 people inside China.
Founded: 2015
Local office opened in: 2016
Located: 777 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue
BaishanCloud provides customized cloud data solutions. Their network spans six continents and services around 400 clients worldwide. The company uses a content delivery network and focuses on data life cycle management, aiming to help businesses deliver content to users with increasing speed and security. The company opened its Bellevue office in 2016, but says the location became fully functional in the summer of 2017.
Founded: 2013
Local office opened in: 2014
Located: 1450 114th Avenue SE, Bellevue
YI Technology builds portable cameras and computer vision technology. The company produces cameras for home security as well as GoPro-style action shots. YI Technology raised $90 million in a single Series A from its partner, phone and electronics company Xiaomi. YI Technology’s headquarters are located in Shanghai, where it is known as Xiaoyi.
