I chose to study in China over a US college. Here's how I stayed plugged into Silicon Valley.

William Chen, the cofounder of Sapient Intelligence, spoke about how he got the best of both worlds while studying in China. Sapient Intelligence William Chen, the cofounder of AI startup Sapient Intelligence, chose to attend college in China. He said Tsinghua University in Beijing supported his entrepreneurial ambitions. But he took a 20-day road trip across the US to keep abreast with the US research scene. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Chen, the 26-year-old cofounder of Sapient Intelligence, a Singapore-based AI lab building AGI. It has been edited for length and clarity. I grew up in Shenzhen, China, a very modern city. I moved to Michigan for high school, where I worked on a lot of robotics-related projects. I'd always dreamt about becoming an inventor when I was a kid, and have always been very interested in designing stuff.