Technology

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

By Bruce Buterin

1 / 15

Where Investors Actually Disagree. The regional split is pretty striking. In nine of the 13 countries surveyed — including the UK,…

2 / 15

China Equity Exposure Doubles in Two Years. The survey also tracked what investors are actually doing with their money, not just what they…

3 / 15

Where Investors Expect AI Returns to Come From. When the survey asked about which AI segment would generate the strongest returns over the next…

4 / 15

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…

5 / 15

The survey, called the Retail Investor Beat, pulled responses from 11,000 retail investors spread across 13 countries. That's a decent sample size.

6 / 15

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.

7 / 15

It's worth sitting with that regional divergence for a second. The UK, Germany, Australia — these aren't fringe markets.

8 / 15

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.

9 / 15

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.

10 / 15

See also: Thailand Investigates $300M Crypto Laundering Network Tied to China

11 / 15

And here's where it gets a little complicated — AI enthusiasm overall seems to be cooling off at the same time.

12 / 15

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.

13 / 15

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…

14 / 15

It's also worth noting that the survey covers retail investors specifically — not institutional money.

15 / 15

Read also: China Targets US Defense Firms and Rare Earth Suppliers, Rattling Crypto Markets

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?