Kai-Fu Lee (; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is currently based in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Lee has worked as an executive, first at

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, then SGI,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between

and

, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services. He works in the Chinese internet sector and was the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, serving from 1998 to 2000; and president of Google China, serving from July 2005 through September 4, 2009. After resigning from his post, he founded Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm. He created a website, () dedicated to helping young Chinese people in their studies and careers and wrote "10 Letters to Chinese College Students". He is a micro-blogger in China, in particular on Sina Weibo, where he has over 50 million followers. In his 2018 book '' AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order'', Lee describes how China is rapidly moving forward to become the global leader in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI), and may well surpass the United States, because of China's demographics and its amassing of huge data sets. In a September 28, 2018 interview on the PBS '' Amanpour'' program, he stated that AI, with all its capabilities, will never be capable of

creativity Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...

or empathy.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the son of Li Tianmin, a legislator and historian from Sichuan,

. Lee has detailed his personal life and career history in his autobiography in both Chinese and English, ''Making a World of Difference'', published in October 2011. In 1973, Lee immigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and attended Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He received a Bachelor of Science, '' summa cum laude'', with a major in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1983. He then earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988. A Taiwanese national by birth, Lee also acquired U.S. citizenship through naturalization while young. He voluntarily relinquished his U.S. citizenship in 2011 and retained only his Taiwanese nationality, citing the reason as wanting to "get back to isroots" after his aging.

Career

Academic research

At Carnegie Mellon, Lee worked on topics in machine learning and pattern recognition. In 1986, he and Sanjoy Mahajan developed ''Bill'', a Bayesian learning-based system for playing the board game Othello that won the US national tournament of computer players in 1989. In 1988, he completed his doctoral dissertation on

Sphinx A sphinx ( ; , ; or sphinges ) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In Culture of Greece, Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, th ...

, which he claims is the first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system. Lee has written two books on speech recognition and more than 60 papers in computer science. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1988 as a Kluwer monograph, ''Automatic Speech Recognition: The Development of the Sphinx Recognition System'' (). Together with Alex Waibel, another Carnegie Mellon researcher, Lee edited ''Readings in Speech Recognition'' (1990, ).

Apple, Silicon Graphics, and Microsoft

After two years as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, Lee joined Apple Computer in 1990 as a principal research scientist. While at Apple (1990–1996), he headed R&D groups responsible for Apple Bandai Pippin, PlainTalk, Casper (speech interface), and GalaTea (text to speech system) for Mac Computers. Lee moved to

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

in 1996 and spent a year as the Vice President of its Web Products division, and another year as president of its multimedia software division, Cosmo Software. In 1998, Lee moved to

and went to

where he played a key role in establishing the Microsoft Research (MSR) division there. MSR China later became known as Microsoft Research Asia, regarded as one of the best computer science research labs in the world. Lee returned to the United States in 2000 and was promoted to corporate vice president of interactive services division at Microsoft from 2000 to 2005.

Move from Microsoft to Google

In July 2005, Lee left Microsoft to take a position at

. The search company agreed to compensation worth in excess of $10 million, including a $2.5 million cash 'signing bonus' and another $1.5 million cash payment after one year, a package referred to internally at

as 'unprecedented'. On July 19, 2005, Microsoft sued Google and Lee in a Washington state court over Google's hiring of its former Vice President of Interactive Services, claiming that Lee was violating his non-compete agreement by working for Google within one year of leaving the Redmond-based software corporation. Microsoft argued that Lee would inevitably disclose proprietary information to Google if he was allowed to work there. On July 28, 2005, Washington state Superior Court Judge Steven González granted Microsoft a temporary restraining order, which prohibited Lee from working on Google projects that compete with Microsoft pending a trial scheduled for January 9, 2006. On September 13, following a hearing, Judge González issued a ruling permitting Lee to work for Google, but barring him from starting work on some technical projects until the case went to trial in January 2006. Lee was still allowed to recruit employees for Google in China and to talk to government officials about licensing, but was prohibited from working on technologies such as search or speech recognition. Lee was also prohibited from setting budgets, salaries, and research directions for Google in China until the case was to go to trial in January 2006. Before the case could go to trial, on December 22, 2005, Google and

announced that they had reached a settlement whose terms are confidential, ending a five-month dispute between the two companies. At Google China, Lee helped establish the company in the market and oversaw its growth in the country. Under his tenure, the Google.cn regional website was launched. He also strengthened the company's teams of engineers and scientists in the country. On September 4, 2009, Lee announced his resignation from Google. He said "With a very strong leadership team in place, it seemed a very good moment for me to move to the next chapter in my career." Alan Eustace, senior Google vice-president for engineering, credited him with "helping dramatically to improve the quality and range of services that we offer in China, and ensuring that we continue to innovate on the Web for the benefit of users and advertisers". Several months after Lee's departure, Google announced that it would stop censorship and move its

mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

servers to

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

Sinovation Ventures

Lee is also an active investor, corralling large amounts of venture capital for the financing, incubation, gestation, and establishment of new high-technology startup companies around the world. On September 7, 2009, he announced details of a $115 million venture capital fund called "Innovation Works" (later changed to " Sinovation Ventures") offering seed money for the incubation and spearheading new early-stage high-technology start-up companies that aims to create five successful Chinese start-ups a year in internet and mobile internet businesses or in vast hosting services known as cloud computing. The Innovation Works fund has attracted several investors, including Steve Chen, co-founder of

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

; Foxconn, the electronics contract manufacturer; Legend Holdings, the parent of PC maker Lenovo; and WI Harper Group. In September 2010, Lee described two Google Android projects for Chinese users: Tapas, a smartphone operating system tailored for Chinese users; and Wandoujia (SnapPea), a desktop phone manager for Android. In December 2012, Innovation Works announced that it had closed a second US$275 million fund. In September 2016, the company announced its corporate name change from Innovation Works to "Sinovation Ventures," closing US$674 million (4.5 billion Chinese yuan) capital injection. Total fund size of Sinovation Ventures exceed US$1 billion. In April 2018, Sinovation Ventures announced its US dollar Fund IV of $500 million. To date, Sinovation Ventures' total asset under management with its dual currency reaches US$2 billion and has invested over 300 portfolios primarily in China.

01.AI

In March 2023, Lee founded 01.AI, an artificial intelligence startup focused on building large language models (LLMs) for the Chinese market. In November 2023 the company released its first LLM, Yi-34B.

Previous positions

* Vice President,

; President, Google Greater China, July 2005–September 4, 2009 * Corporate Vice President, Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), Microsoft Corp. 2000–July 2005 * Founder & Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia, China, 1998–2000 * President, Cosmo Software, Multimedia software business unit of

Inc. (SGI), 1999–2000 * Vice President & General Manager, Web Products, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), 1998–1999 * Vice President, Interactive Media Group, Apple Computer, 1997–1998 * Director, Interactive Media, Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer, 1994–1997 * Manager, Speech & Language Technologies Group, Apple Computer, 1991–1994 * Principal Speech Scientist, Apple Computer, 1990–1991 * Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, July 1990 * Research Computer Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988–1990

Recognition

* Chairman

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

's Global AI Council * Asia House Asian Business Leader 2018 * Fellow,

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

(inducted 2002) * Member, Committee of 100 * ''Time'' 100, 2013 * Honorary Doctorate Degree, Carnegie Mellon University * Honorary Doctorate Degree, City University of Hong Kong

Publications

* * ''Be Your Personal Best'' (《做最好的自己》, published September 2005, People's Publishing House) * ''Making A World of Difference - Kai-Fu Lee Biography'' (《世界因你而不同》, published September 2009, China CITIC Press) * ''Seeing Life Through Death'' (《向死而生》, published July 2015, by China CITIC Press) * ''A Walk Into The Future'' (《与未来同行》, published October 2006, People's Publishing House) * ''To Student With Love'' (《一往情深》, published October 2007, People's Publishing House) * ''Weibo Changing Everything'' (《微博改变一切》, published February 2011, Beijing Xiron Books Co., Ltd) * ''Artificial Intelligence'' (《人工智能》, published May 2017, Beijing Xiron Books Co., Ltd) * ''AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future'' (with Chen Qiufan.《AI 2041：預見10個未來新世界》, published June 2021, Taiwan Commonwealth Publishing Co., Ltd)

Controversies

Lee was barred from Weibo for three days after he used Weibo to complain about China's Internet controls. A February 16, 2013, post summarized a '' Wall Street Journal'' article about how slow speeds and instability deter overseas businesses from locating critical functions in China. In January 2013, he also posted support for staff of a Guangzhou-based newspaper during a standoff with government censors. He was also a vocal critic of the government's blocking of GitHub, which he said was detrimental to China's competitiveness.

Personal life

Lee posted on Weibo on September 5, 2013, that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. In December 2018, Lee spoke at the End Well Symposium on end of life in San Francisco, stating: "I was a maniacal workaholic. That workaholism ended abruptly about five years ago, when I was diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma."

References

External links

Profile at Sinovation Ventures

''Making a World of Difference''
– 2011 autobiography (English) *

Interviews

BBC Interview of the Week: Kai-Fu Lee (2018)

"Kai-Fu Lee on the Future of AI"
2019 TED Interview
"Kai-Fu Lee: AI Superpowers – China and Silicon Valley"
2019 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Kai-Fu 1961 births Living people 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American scientists American bloggers American chairpersons of corporations American chief executives of financial services companies American computer businesspeople American computer scientists American expatriates in China American technology chief executives American financial company founders American technology writers Businesspeople from Taipei Businesspeople from Tennessee Businesspeople in information technology Carnegie Mellon University alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Fellows of the IEEE Members of the Committee of 100 Microsoft employees Microsoft Research people People from Oak Ridge, Tennessee Scientists from Tennessee Speech processing researchers Taiwanese emigrants to the United States Writers from Tennessee People who renounced United States citizenship American people of Taiwanese descent