On May 31, 2019, Baidu CEO Robin Li issued an internal letter announcing the appointment of Senior Vice President Wang Haifeng as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Baidu Group. At the same time, he will continue to serve as the head of AI technology platform system (AIG) and basic technology system (TG). principal.
Li Yanhong pointed out in the internal letter that the purpose of this appointment is "to further build and consolidate the company's core technological advantages" and "to promote industrial intelligent transformation."
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Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng
Before being promoted to the CTO of Baidu Group, Wang Haifeng had worked at Baidu for nearly 10 years.
According to Li Yanhong's internal letter, Wang Haifeng joined Baidu in January 2010 and served as senior scientist, chief scientist of basic technology, vice president, and senior vice president from 2010 to 2013. He successively created the Natural Language Processing Department, Internet Data R&D Department, Recommendation Engine and Personalization Department, Multimedia Department, Image Search Department, and Voice Technology Department for Baidu.
In the first half of 2013, Wang Haifeng assisted in the creation of Baidu Institute of Deep Learning (IDL) as the executive director. In October of the same year, he was promoted to vice president of Baidu.
In 2014, Wang Haifeng transferred to the search business group as the deputy general manager. He was responsible for user products such as search, information flow, mobile Baidu, and DuMi, as well as basic technologies such as natural language processing and knowledge graphs.
In March 2017, Wang Haifeng formed AIG. By the end of 2018, he will take charge of TG and AIG. He is generally responsible for Baidu's artificial intelligence technologies and basic technologies such as algorithms, computing power, data, and security.
At Baidu, Wang Haifeng is one of the founders and principals of Baidu's artificial intelligence technology. In the industry, Wang Haifeng is a well-known industry leader.
According to the encyclopedia, Wang Haifeng is the first Chinese chairman in the history of ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics), the most influential international academic organization in the field of natural language processing, and the only ACL member from mainland China. Wang Haifeng also holds various positions in many international academic organizations, international conferences, and international journals. In addition, Wang Haifeng has won one second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, five first prizes of the Chinese Institute of Electronics for Science and Technology Progress, the first winner of the Wu Wenjun Outstanding Contribution Award in Artificial Intelligence, and the National Hundreds The winner of "Expert" enjoys the special government allowance of the State Council.
According to the data, Wang Haifeng has published 153 academic papers and more than 300 patent applications have been authorized or published. Won 2 Chinese Patent Silver Awards.
Wang Haifeng is not only a master of technology research and development, but also a master of technology application transformation. In Li Yanhong's words, Wang Haifeng is a pragmatic, innovative and responsible technical leader and outstanding leader with talent in technology application forwarding.
To promote Wang Haifeng to Baidu Group's CTO, Robin Li values his technical capabilities and his innovative AI commercialization capabilities.
From the day when Wang Haifeng served as the CTO of Baidu Group, helping Baidu achieve industrial AI breakthrough and leading Baidu to find the upward curve again has become his most important job.
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Pragmatic Wang Haifeng
Is it a good idea for Li Yanhong to choose Wang Haifeng as the breaker of Baidu AI? Facts have proved that Robin Li's choice is correct.
Let's take a look at the changes in Baidu AI after Wang Haifeng was promoted to Baidu Group's CTO.
According to the 2019 annual summary released by Baidu AI, in 2019, Baidu ranked first with 5712 patent applications in China in 2019, and it has included deep learning technology, speech recognition, natural language processing, intelligent driving, etc. No. 1 in the core field of artificial intelligence.
Baidu Brain 5.0 achieved algorithm breakthroughs, upgraded computing architecture and integrated innovation with application scenarios, and became a "soft and hard AI mass production platform".
Baidu Apollo's number of license plates, test mileage, and number of fleets are the first in China. Xiaodu's car OS has worked with more than 300 leading ecological partners and established commercial cooperation with more than 60 automobile brands.
In 2019, Baidu Smart Cloud helped Baidu App withstand the impact of the largest traffic Spring Festival Gala red envelope in history; the number of users doubled, revenue increased 2 times, traffic and servers increased 3 times year-on-year.
In 2019, Baidu AI, led by Wang Haifeng, completed the technical and industrial reorganization, further consolidated the foundation, became more open and more active.
In 2020, Baidu AI began to accelerate the intelligentization of the industry on the road of persistence, and achieved good results.
According to the summary of Baidu AI 2020 released by Baidu on December 30, 2020, in 2020, new AI infrastructure capabilities such as Baidu Brain, Baidu Flying Paddle, quantum computing, and AI-Native cloud computing architecture will be further consolidated and promoted Intelligent transportation, smart cities, smart finance, smart energy, smart medical, industrial Internet, and smart manufacturing have achieved industrial intelligent upgrades.
Baidu AI in 2020 will be more intelligent in the industry. The industrial value of Baidu's search, map, input method, Xiaodu, Apollo and other products and platforms is further highlighted. Baidu's intelligent cloud capabilities are more powerful, and Baidu's AI technology achievements and platform capabilities have been delivered to various industries on a large scale to support industrial intelligence To accelerate the arrival of the smart economy.
According to the summary of "Baidu AI 2020", the daily call volume of Baidu Smart Cloud in 2020 will exceed 1 trillion. Compared with 2019, the number of active customers using Baidu AI Cloud has increased by 65%. In IDC China's AI cloud service market vendor evaluation, Baidu Smart Cloud ranked first for three consecutive times.
At present, Baidu Smart Cloud has become a key force in accelerating large-scale industrial production such as smart cities, smart finance, smart healthcare, industrial Internet and smart manufacturing, smart energy, and smart office. Take the intelligent manufacturing empowered by Baidu Smart Cloud as an example. It currently covers 14 major industries, more than 100 companies, more than 30 partners, and reaches more than 50 types of vertical scenarios. It has been used in 3C, automotive, steel, energy and other industries. Scale landing.
Baidu AI's achievements in 2020 are far more than the above points, interested friends can search for "Baidu AI 2020" to view.
In 2020, Baidu AI under the leadership of Wang Haifeng has a clear direction, clearer play style, and better performance in industrial intelligence.
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Breaker Wang Haifeng
Baidu AI 2020 has a clear direction and the fundamental reason for clear play is that Wang Haifeng has formulated a pragmatic and clear development strategy for Baidu AI.
On May 7, 2020, Wang Haifeng proposed a new strategy of "cloud computing as the foundation, AI as the starting point, and focusing on important tracks." at the internal meeting of the first quarter of 2020 held by Baidu Smart Cloud. Baidu Smart Cloud's new strategy is a new strategy proposed in the "value landing" stage of the domestic cloud computing market competition from large-scale competition to deeper industry. The new strategy not only points out the direction of the collaborative development of Baidu AI and Baidu Smart Cloud.
On September 15, 2020, the "All Things Intelligence-Baidu World 2020" conference was held online and offline simultaneously. CCTV News presented Baidu AI's most advanced technological achievements and the most comprehensive landing cases to global audiences in a multi-scenario, all-round, and three-dimensional manner through a full live broadcast. At the meeting, Wang Haifeng announced that Baidu's brain was upgraded to 6.0 and clarified the positioning of the "new AI infrastructure".
Under Wang Haifeng's pragmatic strategy of "focusing on important tracks" as the core, Baidu's AI intelligent applications have been able to accelerate the implementation of multiple vertical fields and become an important booster for industrial intelligence.
Baidu AI's practice in 2020 shows that Wang Haifeng's new strategy is successful. This success is not only reflected in the large-scale application and promotion speed of industrial intelligence, but also in the boost to Baidu's confidence in the capital market.
In mid-December 2020, some media reported that Baidu was considering building an electric car on its own, and had negotiated with Geely, Guangzhou Automobile and FAW and other vehicle manufacturers to discuss the feasibility.
Affected by the news of car building, Baidu's share price rose sharply. On December 15, Baidu’s stock price rose nearly 14% in early trading to close at US$185.5, and its market value exceeded US$60 billion, setting a new closing high since December 4, 2018. Since then, Baidu's stock price has risen all the way. On December 30, Baidu's closing price rose 12.59% to close at US$219.63, and its market value was approaching US$75 billion.
When Li Yanhong announced that Wang Haifeng was promoted to the group's CTO in 2019, he said: I hope that he will be pioneering and enterprising in his new role, continue to do a good job in the forward-looking layout of technology, continue to innovate and break through, strengthen the landing, improve efficiency, and turn technical advantages into advantages in products and user experience. , And play a key role in supporting business success, expanding Baidu’s technological brand influence.
The boost in the capital market's confidence in Baidu shows. After more than a year of exploration, Wang Haifeng not only found the doorway for Baidu's industrial AI to land, but also found a way to help Baidu boost confidence in the capital market.
2021, or Wang Haifeng's break year. Xi Ge believes that with Wang Haifeng already found to accelerate the implementation of AI industrialization, Baidu's industrial AI will burst into greater capabilities in 2021 to help accelerate the development of China's industrial economy.
In 2021, Wang Haifeng breaks the game, Baidu can expect.