'Chinese Netflix', LeEco moves headquarters to San Jose with 12,000 potential jobs

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- The prospect of 12,000 new tech jobs in Silicon Valley is creating a stir as a Chinese company launched its entry into the U.S. market in San Francisco Wednesday.

LeEco is known as the Netflix of China, streaming movies online and making original films. It's big in China, but its products and services are mostly unknown here. Staffing experts say it's going to face tough competition in Silicon Valley for top talent.

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It made a big splash in San Francisco at an event to launch its U.S. presence.

The company has ambitions to become an electronics firm with a wide range of products from big screen TV's to mobile phones, to electric vehicles. To reach that goal, it's moving its global headquarters to San Jose. It purchased the land from Yahoo.

LeEco is also getting buzz because it plans to create 12,000 jobs. Its website lists 25 pages of technical jobs.

With its wide range of products it appears to be taking on a pantheon of Silicon Valley tech giants, including Apple and Tesla, and even those companies have challenges competing for talent.

Angela Johal has been recruiting tech employees in Silicon Valley for a quarter century.

"For a company that hasn't really been recognized and is very new to the area, they're really going to have to do a lot of promoting to make sure they get themselves heard in the marketplace," she said.

That seems to be the strategy behind the high profile launch, with lots of videos to show off their products and job applicants seem to be interested.

"It might not have a name or a big name," said job seeker Sephina Strong-Davis. "It might not be known but, it probably could go take me places and stuff, so I would be optimistic about it."

How fast LeEco will hire is unknown. Its estimated to have 250 employees now and could hit double that number by year's end. That's still a long way from 12,000.

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