Kai-Fu Lee has had a front-row seat to the rapid growth of China’s AI industry over the past four decades, playing a central role first in building institutions that have spawned much of the talent now powering the country’s leading companies.
The Taiwanese-American computer scientist helped establish Microsoft Research Asia, which became a vital training camp for China’s leading AI talent, before later heading up Google’s operations in the country. Today, Lee heads Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in AI start-ups and is the founder of 01.ai, a Beijing-based AI start-up building agentic tools for companies worldwide.
In conversation with the Financial Times’ China technology correspondent Eleanor Olcott, he talks about the competition between AI’s two superpowers — China and the US — and why companies need to be more proactive to adopt the changing technology.