Meet Beijing’s 14 Top CEO’s in the Social Space

Robin Li

Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Baidu

Robin Li is the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Baidu. He is responsible for the company’s overall business strategy and operations. In the 11 years since founding Baidu with Eric Xu, Robin has turned the company into China’s largest search engine, with over an 80% market share. Baidu also ranks as the second largest independent search engine in the world. In August 2005, Baidu was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, and in December 2007 became the first Chinese company to be listed on the NASDAQ-100 Index. Prior to co-founding Baidu, Li worked as a staff engineer for Infoseek, a pioneer in the internet search engine industry, from 1997 to 1999. He was a senior consultant for IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997. In 1996, Robin developed the Rankdex site-scoring algorithm for search engine page ranking, which was awarded a U.S. Patent. His patent is a significant innovation and ranks among the inventions that shaped internet search technology. In 1998 Robin published the book “”Business War in Silicon Valley in the Mainland based on his experiences in Silicon Valley. At present, Baidu is home to 4,000 world-class search engine product and technology engineers, and was the first Chinese Internet company to create a post-doctoral research center. With Baidu’s success, China stands proudly with the United States, Russia and South Korea as one of the four countries in the world to possess its own core search engine technology. At the 2009 Baidu Technology Innovation Conference, Robin shared his vision of “”Box Computing””. He has substantially advanced the theoretical framework of China’s internet sciences, and has become a driving force behind the overall technology development of the entire Chinese IT industry. While satisfying Chinese-language search needs at home, Robin has also proactively sought to internationalise Baidu. Currently Baidu is vigorously preparing itself to enter the international market. As a pioneer and leader of China’s Internet industry, Robin has received honors including CCTV Key Figure in China’s Economy, The Top 30 Figures in China’s 30 Years of Reform, China’s Most Imaginative Entrepreneur and many other awards. On several occasions, U.S.-based magazines such as Business Week and Fortune Magazine have designated Robin as “”Best Business Leader in the World” and “China’s Most Influential Business Leader”. Robin was also named by Time Magazine as one of the “World’s Most Influential People” in 2010. He was ranked third by Forbes magazine in its China Rich List. Robin received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Management from Peking University in 1991, and received his M. Sc in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1994. He currently works as Vice Chairman of the Internet Society of China (ISC) and is a visiting professor at Wuhan University.

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About Baidu, Baidu Video: Baidu is a search engine that enables individuals to obtain information and finds what they need.

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