Baidu Fills CTO Position After Decade of Vacancy

Baidu announced on May 31 that their Senior Vice President, Wang Haifeng, has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The position had been vacant for over 10 years after the previous CTO Li Yinan resigned in 2010 for personal reasons.

Baidu said that the move was made “to further build and consolidate the company’s core technology advantages, promote product and user experience, as well as to release technology dividends and continue to promote industrial intelligent transformation.”

At present, Baidu is implementing some drastic organizational changes, and a group of leaders who were dedicated enough to “fight hard and win” have been promoted. Throughout the past year, Baidu has introduced nine new executives coming from both inside and outside the company.

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Wang joined Baidu in 2010 and has served as a senior scientist, chief technology scientist, vice president and senior vice president. He was involved in establishing Baidu‘s natural language processing department, the Internet data R&D department, as well as the company’s voice technology department, to name a few.

“Haifeng has always been adhering to the spirit of pragmatism, innovation and responsibility, focusing on improving competitiveness and applications of Baidu technology,” Baidu stated in an internal letter. The Chinese Internet giant added that they hoped that the new CTO would expand the influence of Baidu‘s technology brand and contribute to Baidu‘s mission of “making the complex world simpler with technology”.

Featured photo credit to Internet