China Leads 47% of Retail Investors in Global AI Race, eToro Finds

China just edged ahead. A new survey from trading platform eToro put China at 47% among retail investors who see it as the frontrunner in artificial intelligence — compared to 46% for the United States. One percentage point. Thin margin, but it’s real, and it’s got people talking.

The survey, called the Retail Investor Beat, pulled responses from 11,000 retail investors spread across 13 countries. That’s a decent sample size. Lale Akoner, eToro’s Global Market Strategist, said investors are increasingly paying attention to China’s AI ecosystem — companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, plus China’s cloud infrastructure and manufacturing base. U.S. names like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon still dominate conversations, but they’re not the only game anymore. That’s basically the whole story in one sentence: the field got more competitive, and investors are starting to price that in.

Not everyone agrees, obviously.

Where Investors Actually Disagree

The regional split is pretty striking. In nine of the 13 countries surveyed — including the UK, Germany, and Australia — more investors picked China over the U.S. as the likely AI leader. But inside the United States itself? Completely different picture. There, 63% of respondents backed the U.S., with only 41% choosing China. So American retail investors are still pretty confident in domestic dominance. Whether that’s patriotism, familiarity, or just a genuine read on the market is unclear. Probably some mix of all three.

It’s worth sitting with that regional divergence for a second. The UK, Germany, Australia — these aren’t fringe markets. They’re major financial centers with sophisticated retail investor bases. When a majority of investors in those countries look at the AI race and pick China, that’s not noise. That’s a signal worth tracking.

China Equity Exposure Doubles in Two Years

The survey also tracked what investors are actually doing with their money, not just what they think. And the numbers there are pretty hard to ignore. The share of retail investors holding Chinese stocks jumped from 7% in Q2 2024 to 12% in Q2 2026. That’s nearly doubled in two years. Meanwhile, the proportion of investors expecting China to deliver the strongest long-term stock market returns climbed from 24% in Q4 2024 to 29% by Q2 2026.

The U.S. moved the other way. Investors expecting the strongest long-term returns from American stocks dropped from 45% to 35% over the same stretch. That’s a ten-point slide. Fast.

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And here’s where it gets a little complicated — AI enthusiasm overall seems to be cooling off at the same time. The share of investors expecting AI-related stocks to rise fell from 55% to 44% over the past year. Those expecting declines grew from 11% to 17%. So investors are rotating toward China, but they’re also getting more cautious about AI stocks broadly. That’s kind of a contradictory signal, and the survey doesn’t fully resolve it. Maybe investors see Chinese AI plays as cheaper or less frothy than U.S. equivalents. Maybe they’re hedging. No details on the exact reasoning.

Where Investors Expect AI Returns to Come From

When the survey asked about which AI segment would generate the strongest returns over the next five years, the answers spread out more than you’d expect. Large technology platforms got 31%. AI-focused companies came in at 29%. Semiconductor firms pulled 28%. That’s basically a three-way tie. No single segment ran away with it.

That’s a meaningful shift from where sentiment was a couple of years ago, when semiconductor stocks — think NVIDIA — were the obvious answer for most retail investors chasing AI exposure. Now the bets are spreading out. Investors aren’t just buying chip makers and calling it a day. They’re looking at the full stack: the platforms, the pure-play AI companies, the hardware. That diversification probably reflects both the maturing of the AI investment thesis and some lingering uncertainty about which layer of the stack actually captures the most value long-term.

It’s also worth noting that the survey covers retail investors specifically — not institutional money. Retail sentiment doesn’t always lead markets, and it doesn’t always predict where institutional flows go. But 11,000 respondents across 13 countries is a big enough sample to take seriously as a directional read on where everyday investors are putting their attention and, increasingly, their cash.

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The bottom line from the eToro data: China’s AI story has moved from a talking point to an actual portfolio consideration for a growing slice of global retail investors. Chinese equity exposure among survey respondents nearly doubled in two years, long-term return expectations for China are climbing, and in most countries outside the U.S., more investors now back China over America in the AI race.

The U.S. still leads in domestic confidence. But at 63% versus 47% globally, that lead is narrower than it probably felt a few years ago.