Baidu COO Lu Qi steps down, remains role of vice chairman

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Lu Qi will no longer assume the office of the company's president and COO from July this year for personal reason, while still maintain his role as Baidu's vice chairman. Meanwhile, the current vice president Wang Haifeng will be promoted as senior vice president and take charge of the AIG (artificial intelligence group), according to Baidu's official WeChat account.

Lu Qi has been regarded as a vital leader for the group's revival. During his tenure, the share price of Baidu has jumped nearly 60% with its make valuation at the peak of around $ 100 billion.

Lu Qi joined Baidu in January, 2017 as group's COO and president and has served as vice chairman of the board of directors since February, 2017. He was in charge of the company’s products, technologies, sales, marketing and operations as well as intelligent driving businesses. Prior to joining Baidu, he had worked in Microsoft as its global executive vice president since December, 2008. Earlier in his career, Lu Qi joined Yahoo! in 1998 and later became senior vice president, who was in charge of search and advertising technologies, and subsequently became its executive vice president in 2007. Lu possesses both bachelor and master degrees in computer science from Fudan University in Shanghai and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Wang Haifeng, holding a master degree from Harbin Engineering University, joined Baidu in 2010 and was promoted as vice president in October 2013. He is currently responsible for the research of machine learning, big data, computer vision, natural language processing, voice technologies, image recognition as well as AR (augmented reality).