Lu Qi (; born September 3, 1961) is a

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...

software executive and engineer who is the head of

MiraclePlus MiraclePlus () is a Chinese venture capital firm headquartered in Beijing founded in 2018. It was spun off as an independent firm after Y Combinator China was closed. It is one of the largest startup accelerators in China. Background In 2018 ...

, a startup incubator in China. Previously, Lu was the head of

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

's China until it was shut down. He was formerly the chief operating officer of

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

until he stepped down in May, 2018. He has served as the executive vice president of

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 ...

, leading development of

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

, and

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

, and software engineer and manager for

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

's search technology division.

Early life

Lu was born in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

, China, and was sent to live with his grandparents in a remote village in

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

by his parents during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

. Lu grew up without electricity, plumbing, and other basic amenities, eating meat only twice a year at

Chinese New Year Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival (see also #Names, § Names), is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a New Year, new year on the traditional lunisolar calendar, lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holi ...

celebrations.

Education

Lu obtained undergraduate and master's degrees in computer science at

Fudan University Fudan University (FDU) is a public university, national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal ...

, where he joined the faculty. After attending a talk by Edmund M. Clarke, Lu was invited to apply for a

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, ...

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name **Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist * Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * ...

, which he completed in 1996. Lu arrived in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

in 1988, becoming the second Chinese student to be admitted to the School of Computer Science. His doctoral research focused on

distributed file system A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously Mount (computing), mounted on multiple Server (computing), servers. There are several approaches to computer cluster, clustering, most of which do not emplo ...

s that enable multiple users to share files on a computer network.

Career

Lu worked in one of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's research labs on Internet-related projects from 1996 to 1998. He then joined Yahoo! as an engineer, eventually rising to executive vice president of engineering of search and advertising technology. His departure from Yahoo! in mid-2008 was long planned, and he was contemplating opportunities in venture capital and even thinking of returning to China. However,

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He i ...

personally recruited him to join Microsoft, where Lu was instrumental in driving the launch of

. He later became an architect of

Satya Nadella Satya Narayana Nadella (; born 19 August 1967) is an Indian-born American business executive who is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. B ...

's strategy for

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 ...

and

bot Bot or BOT may refer to: Sciences Computing and technology * Chatbot, a computer program that converses in natural language * Internet bot, a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet **Spambot, an internet bot ...

s at Microsoft. In 2010,

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...

named Lu the tenth most creative person in business for 2010. In January 2017, Lu joined

as group president and chief operating officer in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations. He stepped down on May 18, 2018. In August 2018, he joined

as the head of research and assumed control of YC China. In November 2019, Y Combinator decided to shut down YC China. Lu continues to fund startups under his new program, MiraclePlus. MiraclePlus operates out of its head office in Beijing, and invests checks of $300K USD for 7% into early stage startups around the world. Much like its parent Y Combinator,

operates two cohorts per year (one in the summer, and one in winter).

References

External links

Press release on joining Microsoft

Qi voted number 10 in Fast Company top 100 innovators

Qi lu to exit
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lu, Qi Living people Microsoft employees 1961 births Chinese emigrants to the United States American computer programmers American software engineers Carnegie Mellon University alumni Fudan University alumni Businesspeople from Shanghai Baidu people Scientists from Shanghai Y Combinator people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople