Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu Lee is a pioneering technologist, venture capitalist and author who has spent four decades at the forefront of the AI revolution.

Born in Taipei and educated in the US, Lee began his career as an AI researcher long before the technology captured the world’s imagination. His doctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University produced one of the world’s first large-vocabulary speech recognition systems, and his early research helped push AI from theoretical possibility toward real-world applications.

Kai-Fu Lee went on to hold senior leadership roles at some of the most important technology companies of the modern era, including Apple, Microsoft and Google. At Microsoft he founded the legendary Microsoft Research Asia, widely regarded as the training ground for a generation of China’s leading AI engineers and technology executives. The lab has gone on to produce many of the researchers and leaders behind companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba.

Today, Lee is Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in the next generation of AI and deep-technology companies across China. Through the firm’s investments and its AI institute, he works closely with founders building transformative technologies — from autonomous systems to large language models. He is also the founder of 01.AI, an AI startup focused on helping enterprises build intelligent agents and deploy practical AI applications at scale.

Kai-Fu Lee has long argued that the future of artificial intelligence will be shaped by the dynamic interplay between US and China. A theme he explored in his bestselling book AI Superpowers. Drawing on his experience across Silicon Valley and China’s technology ecosystem, he offers rare insight into how innovation, entrepreneurship and geopolitics are reshaping the technological landscape.

Lee has also become a leading voice on the societal impact of AI from the transformation of work to the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by increasingly powerful systems. A cancer survivor and prolific writer, he frequently speaks about the human dimension of technological progress, urging leaders to ensure that AI ultimately serves humanity.