Kai-Fu Lee

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, managing $2.5 billion dual currency investment funds, is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the President of Google China, and senior executives at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple.

In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee built one of the first game playing programs to defeat a world champion (1988, Othello), as well as the world’s first large vocabulary, speaker independent continuous speech recognition system. Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, later renamed Microsoft Research Asia, which was named as the hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language, which have been featured on Good Morning America on ABC Television and the front page of Wall Street Journal. He has authored 10 U.S. patents, and more than 100 journal and conference papers. Altogether, Dr. Lee has been in artificial intelligence research, development, and investment for more than 30 years.

His New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book, "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order" discusses US-China co-leadership in the age of AI as well as the greater societal impacts brought upon by the AI technology revolution. His new co-authored book "AI 2041" explores how artificial intelligence will change our world over the next twenty years.

Dr. Lee received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is the Co-Chair of Artificial Intelligence Council for World Economic Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Times 100 in 2013, WIRED 25 Icons, and followed by over 50 million followers on social media.