Running away from Baidu, he became a scientist and entrepreneur! Zeng said that scientists should start their business from the future.
From scientist to entrepreneur, Yu Kai is not the first person to "run away" in the field of artificial intelligence.
Despite the previous achievements in scientific research, joining in entrepreneurship means facing the reality of bone feeling.
In March 2015, Yu Kai said in an interview: "If a business can get the resources it deserves to do what it wants, then choose to start a business; If you join a big platform and have more resources to do one thing, then join a big platform. " Sure enough, three months after that, he left Baidu and founded Horizon.
From the initial "no one pays the bill" to October this year, Horizon successfully won the investment of 2.4 billion euros from Volkswagen, setting the largest single investment record for Volkswagen in the past 40 years, and establishing a joint venture company with audi ag’s software company. The transformation of Yu Kai’s identity can be described as unsuccessful.
Before becoming the founder of Horizon, Yu Kai’s label was the top international scholar in the field of machine learning and the main promoter of deep learning technology in China. His published papers were cited more than 20,000 times, and he won the silver award for the best paper in ICML-2013 International Machine Learning Conference. He himself also served as the domain chairman of ICML and NIPS, two major conferences of machine learning.
Yu Kai’s achievements in the academic field go far beyond this.
NEC Research Institute of the United States was once one of the major centers of international machine learning research. During his tenure, Yu Kai established a highly prestigious technology research and development team in Silicon Valley. This team is one of the earliest and most active teams in the field of deep learning in the world. A series of technologies led and developed by him have pushed image object recognition to a new level worldwide, and won many international famous awards.
After joining Baidu in 2012, the voice technology team, deep learning technology team and image technology team led by Yu Kai won the "Baidu’s highest award" three times in succession, creating records of various technical and business teams within Baidu.
In the eyes of outsiders, Yu Kai at that time, both academically and professionally, was smooth sailing.
But at this time, he chose to start a business.
Yu Kai’s reason is straightforward: "In the past three years, what I have done at Baidu is to promote artificial intelligence in the cloud. But I think there will be a bigger trend in the next few years that I have to do: from artificial intelligence in the cloud to artificial intelligence around everyone. "
Therefore, Yu Kai, who has always believed in "doing things is the most important thing", founded Beijing Horizon Information Technology Co., Ltd. in July 2015, focusing on edge computing in the field of artificial intelligence.
From the moment the company was founded, in his own words: First of all, I will forget that I am a scientist more and more.
To be a scientist, you can put the main
Yu Kai has always wanted to grasp some "truth" things in this process, for example, things that can really create long-term value. With this idea in mind, at the beginning of Horizon’s establishment, he played the slogan of "making brains for machines", and avoided the edge of the field giants, took the edge computing route, and insisted on making AI chips.
It was really hard at first.
When recalling the initial stage of starting a business and determining the development direction, Yu Kai mentioned: At that time, we were predicting a far future, a future that might take 20 years as its dimension. From computers to smart phones, and beyond, what is a bigger computing platform than these? At that time, they were sure,
Now that we hear about AI chips, it’s needless to say its importance. But when Horizon was founded, not every investor could understand the "blueprint" in Yu Kai’s eyes. As a direct result, the horizon was once unsustainable. Until smart cars become "robots"
In 2020, smart cars ushered in an outbreak period. As a result, there is a global "lack of core" in the automotive industry.
A chip with excellent computing power, like a smart brain, can accurately control the behavior of the vehicle. A series of functions, such as environmental awareness, route planning, driving assistance and so on, advertised by smart cars all need to rely on chips to be realized.
This is also consistent with what Yu Kai has always wanted to do. He has always believed that the real significance of artificial intelligence is not to survive and develop as the opposite of human life, but to support people’s decision-making and enhance their ability. Once the smart car scene is broken down, this ability will definitely spill over to others.
In August 2019, Horizon announced the mass production of China’s first car-class AI chip "Journey 2";
In September 2020, Horizon officially launched the AI chip "Journey 3";
In July, 2021, Horizon released "Journey 5", a high-performance and large-computing, full-scene intelligent central computing chip for the whole vehicle.
……
Yu Kai once said, "The course of a scientist’s entrepreneurship is not based on business opportunities,
This cooperation between Horizon and Volkswagen may be the next future in Yu Kai’s plan.