Founder of 01.AI; Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures; author of AI Superpowers
Fee information first. Availability is normally checked once there is a concrete intention to proceed.
Kai-Fu Lee connects AI research with the work of building products, investing in companies and developing an enterprise capability. His career spans US and Chinese technology ecosystems, giving audiences a perspective on how innovation moves through different markets. For leadership teams, he brings the operational side of the sovereignty debate: access to infrastructure matters when organisations can turn it into useful applications. His contribution helps a room examine the talent, execution and commercial choices between a national AI ambition and a working capability.
Infrastructure and model access are starting points for an enterprise AI capability. Lee connects research and executive experience with the practical work of developing products, teams and applications. For leadership audiences, this perspective asks what the organisation needs to learn and operate itself, and which relationships can support that work. It helps turn an abstract AI ambition into a discussion of concrete operating choices.
Lee brings experience across US and Chinese technology organisations to the discussion of global AI development. His perspective examines how research, entrepreneurship and commercial adoption interact in different settings. For international audiences, the useful question is how those differences change the options available to a business. The discussion broadens the view beyond a single national technology narrative without treating either ecosystem as uniform.
Building an AI company requires decisions about customers, technical capability and execution. Lee's entrepreneurial and investment experience provides a lens on the distance between a promising model and a useful application. For executives, the conversation focuses on which capabilities the organisation needs to develop and how to evaluate whether an AI initiative serves a defined purpose. It keeps adoption tied to the work being changed.
AI adoption raises questions about how tasks, roles and organisational capabilities develop together. Drawing on his research, executive experience and books, Lee explores the implications of those choices. For leadership audiences, the discussion connects technical possibility with decisions about people and operating models. It invites a concrete examination of the work involved rather than assuming that a general forecast determines what every organisation should do.
Kai-Fu Lee is an AI researcher, technology executive, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of 01.AI and the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures. His career spans artificial intelligence research, product leadership and investment across US and Chinese technology ecosystems.
Lee previously served as president of Google China and held executive roles at Apple and Microsoft. He earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research included speech recognition. These experiences connect the scientific development of AI with the practical questions of building organisations and bringing technologies into use.
Through Sinovation Ventures, he has worked with the development of technology businesses and the capabilities needed to scale them. His founding of 01.AI brings a further entrepreneurial perspective to the discussion of generative AI. For leadership audiences, that combination creates a useful bridge between the promise of a technology and the organisational decisions required to deploy it.
His books include AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order and AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, the latter co-authored with Chen Qiufan. They explore AI's development and possible consequences for economies, organisations and daily life. They provide context for his wider discussion of technological change, rather than substitutes for current evidence about individual models.
Lee's perspective is particularly relevant when an event needs to connect global AI competition with enterprise execution. He brings experience from different institutional and commercial settings and asks how capability diffuses beyond the laboratory. For a board considering AI sovereignty, the useful discussion concerns what the organisation must learn to build or operate, what it can obtain through partners and where practical dependence remains.
Send us the event context and we’ll come back personally with the relevant fee information and next steps.
We use essential technologies to run this site. Optional analytics and measurement help us understand and improve how it is used.
