Who is Lu Qi, head of Y Combinator’s new China arm?

Silicon Valley star accelerator is expanding to China with the help of a legendary Chinese engineer

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Lu Qi is an expert in artificial intelligence and has worked for some of the world’s biggest search engines. (Picture: Bloomberg)

Published: 7:00pm, 15 Aug 2018Updated: 8:36am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator has announced it’s launching a unit in China, naming former Baidu executive Lu Qi as CEO.

Nicknamed “The Harvard of Silicon Valley”, the incubator is known to be extremely selective: In March, more than 7,000 firms competed for 141 slots in one class. It has seeded over 1,900 startups, including big names like Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit. Even though it’s accepted overseas startups, this is the first time it’ll open a branch outside of the US.

Y Combinator's star power stands in contrast to Lu -- who’s kept a relatively low profile but is nonetheless a highly-regarded figure in the tech world.

Udi Manber, an executive for search at Google, once told the New York Times that Lu is “probably the best competition I can have.” In Y Combinator’s announcement, president Sam Altman described Lu as one of the most impressive technologists he knows, and said he’s been trying to recruit him for many years.

LU’S RISE

Lu’s experience spans the US and China. While teaching computer science at China’s Fudan University, he was invited by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a PhD degree.