Who do you want to help Lu Qi pick? Xiaomi, Tencent, Alibaba, Didi, JD.com, Toutiao...

Today is the tenth day since Lu Qi left Baidu. In these short ten days, Lu Qi has "joined" many large companies: Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, JD.com, Toutiao. As he remains as the vice chairman of Baidu, we may have to wait for half a year or a year to find out where Lu Qi will go. Now, the more interesting thing seems to be, where do people want Lu Qi to go?

Millet

On the evening of the 27th, someone posted on Maimai, "Internal revelations: Waiting for the release, posting as evidence. Lu Qi will join Xiaomi as a partner before Xiaomi goes public at the latest, specifically responsible for Xiaomi's newly established global mobile AI division, and deepening Xiaomi's ecological chain. Insiders revealed that Lu Qi was impressed by Lei Jun's background in software, but he is so good at hardware."

It was both an internal leak and a post as evidence, and it also pointed out the time when Lu Qi joined Xiaomi, the department and position he held, and even his motivation. It seemed quite credible and it was difficult to tell whether it was true or not.

In the anonymous comment section, an “Ali employee” said, “The situation is not good, and it seems real. Lu Qi once publicly said that Baidu AI lacks a landing carrier, and it is far from enough to rely solely on driverless cars. Xiaomi has software and offline carriers, and it is indeed a platform for Lu Qi to deploy AI.”

Currently, Xiaomi has made AI the core of its strategy for the next ten years. Among them, Xiaomi mobile phones are a huge AI scenario. Lei Jun once said that 300 million users around the world are using the system installed in Xiaomi mobile phones, and the amount of data stored in cloud services exceeds 200TB. At the same time, Xiaomi also has a smart home IoT strategy. As of November 1, there are more than 8,000 IoT devices.

During his tenure at Baidu, Lu Qi has promoted cooperation between Baidu and Xiaomi. Last November, at the Xiaomi IoT Developer Conference, Lu Qi attended and announced that Baidu and Xiaomi had reached an AI strategic cooperation, combining Xiaomi's smart hardware, smart device ecosystem and Baidu's AI technology. It is not impossible to say that Lu Qi is interested in Xiaomi's hardware strength.

On the other hand, in a question on Zhihu titled “What do you think of the online rumor that Lu Qi may join Xiaomi and be in charge of the global mobile AI department?”, user “Uncle Bucktooth” believes that the news of Lu Qi joining Xiaomi is false. First, because the position does not match, Xiaomi’s position (Global Mobile AI Division) is only equivalent to the general manager of the division, which is slightly lower for Lu Qi. Secondly, there is a non-compete agreement, and Lu Qi is still on the Baidu board of directors. It is conservatively estimated that he will not join a new company in 2018. Zhang Tong, former vice president of Baidu Research Institute and director of the Big Data Laboratory, joined Tencent, but the news was not announced until half a year later.

The above discussions by “netizens” all have their own reasons, and the final answer will be determined by the official response. On the evening of the 27th, Xiaomi officially responded to Tencent’s “First Line”, calling the above rumors a rumor. As for the “Xiaomi Global Mobile AI Division” mentioned in the rumor, no public information has been seen so far.

Ali

Coincidentally, just five days ago, there were rumors that Alibaba might invite Lu Qi, who had just resigned, to be the global president, and Tencent QQ was also involved in the bidding ranking.

Wang Shuai, chairman of Alibaba Group’s Marketing and Public Relations Committee, responded: It is indeed a rumor, there is no such thing.

In everyone's opinion, the position of Alibaba's global president matches Lu Qi's resume. Lu Qi has served as the global executive vice president of Yahoo and Microsoft, and is the second-in-command of Baidu after Robin Li. However, the main responsibility of the position of Alibaba's global president is to manage Alibaba's global overseas business and help Alibaba's globalization, which is more inclined to macro management and market development, which is inconsistent with Lu Qi's experience in search and artificial intelligence and his emphasis on technology and engineering culture.

Alibaba's layout in artificial intelligence is mainly in the fields of cities, industry and retail. Among them, Alibaba's "ET City Brain" is one of the four national artificial intelligence teams. Compared with Baidu's Apollo and Tencent's AI medical care, Alibaba's City Brain has achieved initial results, and Alibaba's Industrial Brain, Environmental Brain, etc. have also been implemented. Alibaba has also laid out the new retail field by investing in computer vision unicorn companies such as Megvii and SenseTime.

Tencent/Didi

When Lu Qi left Microsoft, there were rumors that he would join Tencent or Didi, but Baidu suddenly appeared.

In April 2016, Sina Technology reported that there were rumors that former Microsoft executive Qi Lu might join Tencent to be responsible for AI and map business, and the most likely position would be co-president. Compared with Baidu and Alibaba, Tencent is relatively lacking in the above two technical fields, and Qi Lu's arrival can make up for this.

People familiar with the matter told Sina Technology that Lu Qi has had several contacts with Tencent and will make a formal announcement once both sides reach an agreement on all issues. Microsoft will also issue a statement at that time, parting ways with the core technical executive who has been in charge of Microsoft's Internet business for eight years in a friendly manner.

At the same time, since Lu Qi had been in charge of Bing search and map-related businesses at Microsoft for a long time, there were also rumors that Lu Qi would join Uber or Didi. Because Didi had become a giant in the travel industry at that time, it had a huge amount of travel data to manage, and from this point of view, Lu Qi's industry experience in search, big data, and artificial intelligence would be very much needed.

In the end, Lu Qi unexpectedly chose Baidu. This choice may be because Baidu, which started out as a search engine, is a better match for Lu Qi's work experience, or because Robin Li "visited him many times" and handed him important power.

JD.com/Toutiao

In the battle to snatch Lu Qi, JD.com and Toutiao did not sit idly by and watch the show. There were also some rumors that JD.com and Toutiao had officially invited Lu Qi to serve as global president. The two rumors are basically the same, except that the word JD.com was replaced by Toutiao. Their credibility is not as good as that of the BAT trio.

In April this year, JD.com just announced its AI layout. After BAT established AI laboratories and open platforms, JD.com also launched the JD.com AI open platform NeuHub, which will be implemented in five major directions: finance, smart logistics, smart consumption, smart supply, and external empowerment, as well as seven major application directions: e-commerce, logistics, finance, retail, fashion, public affairs, and smart hardware. JD.com's AI layout is one step slower than BAT, and it is currently mainly aimed at the core retail business. Where is Lu Qi's role in this core business?

Although Baidu has rapidly transformed into AI and established two major platforms, DuerOS and Apollo, under Lu Qi's promotion, search business is still Baidu's core business, and Baidu is still eager to seize the market of Toutiao's information flow. However, during Lu Qi's tenure at Baidu, Baidu's information flow business has grown, but it is still not a rival to Toutiao. So will Lu Qi also want to fully embrace the information flow?

On Maimai, an anonymous user named "Duan Yu" also posted, "Xiaomi officially denied the rumor that Lu Qi joined Xiaomi. It seems that in just one week, Lu Qi has been 'joined' by many big companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, and Toutiao. Which company do you think Lu Qi is more likely to join in the end?"

As of 17:00 on the 28th, the most popular comment was: He will definitely not come to JD.com. Frequent job hopping does not conform to the 25th principle. Even though Xiaomi has clarified the matter, many people still believe that the most credible news is that Lu Qi will go to Xiaomi.

Pick Me

At present, BAT, Xiaomi, Didi, JD.com, and Toutiao are all making comprehensive arrangements for AI, and the competition for talent is becoming increasingly fierce. The direction of talent also reveals a company's strategic layout.

Assuming the following companies become options, which one would you like to pick for Lu Qi?

• Millet

• Ali

• Tencent

• Didi

• JD.com

• Headlines

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.