UPDATED 23:53 EDT / JANUARY 16 2017

CLOUD

Doubling down on AI, Baidu hires former top Microsoft exec Qi Lu as COO

Former Microsoft Corp. executive Qi Lu on Monday joined Chinese web services giant Baidu Inc. as group president and chief operating officer.

Lu, a noted software engineer and programmer, spent time at IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. before taking on the role of president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft in 2008. He headed up the development of the company’s Bing search engine.

Appointed as Microsoft’s executive vice president in charge of Office, Bing and Skype in 2013, Lu was credited as being the architect of Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s strategy for artificial intelligence and bots. He left Microsoft in September because of medical issues that arose from a bicycle accident earlier last year, though his return to the limelight in such a prominent position at Baidu suggests other factors may have affected his departure.

Lu’s COO role puts him in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations at Baidu, with every business unit head at the company reporting to him. He joins Baidu at a difficult time for the company, which saw ad revenues drop 16 percent in the quarter ending Sept. 30. The decline was partly attributed to new regulations introduced by the Chinese government on online advertising following the death of a student who tried a treatment advertised on the company’s search engine.

Those regulations include guidelines to guard against false or misleading practices as well as a prohibition against online ads for prescription medication and tobacco. Also, prior government approval is required for ads for medical supplies, pesticides, veterinary medicine and other health products, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

Even before the introduction of the new regulations, Baidu has looked to artificial intelligence as a new profit driver for the company. In mid-2104, it hired former Google Brain team leader and noted deep learning neural network researcher Andrew Ng as chief scientist, based in Baidu’s Silicon Valley lab.

“Dr. Lu possesses a wealth of leadership and management experience, and is a leading authority in the area of artificial intelligence,” Baidu Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer Robin Li said in a statement. “To achieve our goals, especially in artificial intelligence, which is a key strategic focus for the next decade, we will need to continue attracting the best global talent. With Dr. Lu on board, we are confident that our strategy will be executed smoothly and Baidu will become a world-class technology company and global leader in AI.”

Along with launching a $200 million venture capital unit in September to focus on artificial intelligence, Baidu has also recently revealed a smart device similar to that of Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo that can understand spoken commands, answer random questions, play music and even make video calls. It also has done a lot of research on autonomous cars.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain CC0

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU