Kai-Fu Lee · CEO & Founder · Sinovation / 01.AI · The WLS 100 · 2026 Edition
Technology
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Inaugural edition 2026 · Asia

Kai-Fu Lee

CEO & Founder

Pont tech US-Chine. Expert IA mondial.

Education
Columbia · Carnegie Mellon (PhD)
Organization
Profile

Born in Taiwan and educated in the United States, where he earned a Carnegie Mellon doctorate in speech recognition, Kai-Fu Lee held senior roles at Apple and Microsoft, where he founded the company's Beijing research lab, before serving as president of Google China. In 2009 he launched Sinovation Ventures, which has backed hundreds of Chinese start-ups, and in 2023 founded 01.AI, a laboratory building large language models. The author of the bestseller AI Superpowers, he is one of the few experts heard with equal attention in Beijing and Silicon Valley.

Why this selection

A bridge between the two leading AI powers, he has informed the global debate on the technology's economic and societal stakes for fifteen years, a rare reach in a fragmented field.

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