Lu Qi (computer scientist)
Lu Qi | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 3, 1961 Shanghai, China |
| Occupation(s) | Technology executive, engineer |
| Known for | Chief operating officer at Baidu, executive vice president at Microsoft, head of Y Combinator China, founder of MiraclePlus |
Lu Qi (; born September 3, 1961) is a Chinese American technology executive and engineer, currently at the helm of MiraclePlus, a startup accelerator based in China. Before this role, he led the China division of Y Combinator until its shutdown. Lu previously held the position of chief operating officer at Baidu until May 2018 and served as an executive vice president at Microsoft, where he directed the development of Bing, Skype, and Microsoft Office. Earlier in his career, he was responsible for managing Yahoo!'s search technology unit.
Early life
Lu was born in Shanghai, China, and spent his childhood raised by his grandparents in a rural village during the Cultural Revolution. His early years were marked by a simple lifestyle with scarce access to basic utilities and limited consumption of meat.
Education
He completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science at Fudan University, where he also held a teaching position. Motivated by a lecture from Edmund M. Clarke, Lu pursued doctoral studies at Carnegie Mellon University, earning his PhD in 1996. Notably, he was the second Chinese student admitted to Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. His dissertation concentrated on distributed file systems designed to facilitate networked file sharing.
Career
From 1996 to 1998, Lu contributed to Internet-related projects within IBM's research laboratories before joining Yahoo! as an engineer. He eventually advanced to executive vice president overseeing engineering for search and advertising technologies. After planning to leave Yahoo! in 2008, he was recruited by Steve Ballmer to join Microsoft, where he played an instrumental role in launching Bing and influenced Satya Nadella's approach to AI and bot development.
In 2010, Lu was recognized by Fast Company as the tenth most innovative individual in business.
In January 2017, he assumed the roles of group president and chief operating officer at Baidu, managing product development, technology, sales, marketing, and overall operations. He resigned from this position in May 2018. By August of the same year, Lu took on leadership of YC China as head of research at Y Combinator.
After YC China ceased operations in November 2019, Lu established MiraclePlus in Beijing. The incubator invests $300K for a 7% stake in early-stage startups worldwide and conducts two cohorts annually, following the model pioneered by Y Combinator.