Kai-Fu Lee

Dr. kai-fu lee

AI Expert & Author of 'AI Superpowers' | CEO of 01.AI | Former President of Google China, Former Vice President Microsoft China

One of the world's foremost authorities on AI, who has built it as a researcher, scaled it as a product executive, and funded it as an investor across Silicon Valley and China. Lee brings a rare three-sided view: not just what the technology can do, but how it diffuses through economies.

Keynote Topics:

  • The Rise of Agentic AI and the Next Wave of Intelligent Automation
    Where AI is heading beyond today's chatbots, from the founder of a generative-AI company building at the frontier. Lee maps the shift to agentic systems and what it means for the next decade of enterprise automation.
  • AI Superpowers: The Global Race Between the US and China
    The definitive insider account of the two halves of the AI story, from the author of the international bestseller. Lee explains why understanding AI's trajectory requires seeing both the American and the Chinese sides at once.
  • Building an AI-First Organization
    How companies actually put AI to work, from someone who led Google China and founded Microsoft Research Asia. Lee connects strategy to execution, drawing on decades of building and scaling AI inside major organizations.
  • The Future of Work in the Age of AI
    A grounded view of how AI will reshape jobs, industries, and economies — more profoundly, Lee argues, than the industrial revolution. He addresses both the disruption ahead and the distinctly human capacities that will matter most.


speaker Bio: 

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is one of the world's foremost authorities on artificial intelligence, with a career spanning research, product leadership, and investment across both Silicon Valley and China. He is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of its AI Institute, and the founder of 01.AI, a generative-AI unicorn building domain-specific large language models. Before founding Sinovation in 2009, he served as President of Google China and held senior executive roles at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. He also founded Microsoft Research China — later Microsoft Research Asia — which trained a generation of China's AI leaders.

A pioneer in artificial intelligence, Lee led the creation of one of the first speaker-independent continuous speech recognition systems and holds a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum's AI Council, a Fellow of the IEEE, and was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2013. His internationally bestselling books — AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order and AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future — have shaped the global conversation on AI's impact, and he is followed by more than 50 million people on social media.

Summary (Core Conviction):

Lee's central argument is that artificial intelligence will reshape the world more profoundly than the industrial revolution — and that understanding its trajectory requires seeing both the American and the Chinese halves of the story. Having built AI as a researcher, scaled it as a product executive, and funded it as an investor, he brings a rare three-sided view: not just what the technology can do, but how it diffuses through economies and what it demands of business leaders. With 01.AI, his focus has moved to the frontier of agentic and enterprise-scale AI — the systems that will define the next decade of intelligent automation.

speaker Video:

Kai-Fu Lee

Ready to bring Dr. Lee to your stage?

Transparent terms, a single contract, one point of contact — from first call to standing ovation.