Lu Qi | |
|---|---|
 Lu Qi in 2009 | |
| Born | (1961-09-03)September 3, 1961 (age 63)[1] |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Fudan University (B.S., M.S.) Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D.) |
| Occupation | Founder ofMiraclePlus |
| Known for | CEO ofBing, executive vice-president atMicrosoft |
Lu Qi (simplified Chinese:陆奇;traditional Chinese:陸奇;pinyin:Lù Qí; born September 3, 1961)[1][2] is aChinese American software executive and engineer who is the head ofMiraclePlus, a startup incubator in China. Previously, Lu was the head ofY Combinator's China until it was shut down.[3] He was formerly the chief operating officer ofBaidu until he stepped down in May, 2018. He has served as the executive vice president ofMicrosoft, leading development ofBing,Skype, andMicrosoft Office, and software engineer and manager forYahoo!'s search technology division.
Lu was born inShanghai, China, and was sent to live with his grandparents in a remote village inJiangsu by his parents during theCultural Revolution.[2] Lu grew up without electricity, plumbing, and other basic amenities, eating meat only twice a year atChinese New Year celebrations.[2]
Lu obtained undergraduate and master's degrees in computer science atFudan University, where he joined the faculty.[2] After attending a talk byEdmund M. Clarke, Lu was invited to apply for acomputer sciencePhD atCarnegie Mellon, which he completed in 1996.[4][5] Lu arrived inPittsburgh in 1988, becoming the second Chinese student to be admitted to the School of Computer Science. His doctoral research focused ondistributed file systems that enable multiple users to share files on a computer network.[2]
Lu worked in one ofIBM's research labs on Internet-related projects from 1996 to 1998. He then joined Yahoo! as an engineer, eventually rising to executive vice president of engineering of search and advertising technology. His departure from Yahoo! in mid-2008 was long planned, and he was contemplating opportunities in venture capital and even thinking of returning to China. However,Steve Ballmer personally recruited him to join Microsoft, where Lu was instrumental in driving the launch ofBing. He later became an architect ofSatya Nadella’s strategy forartificial intelligence andbots at Microsoft.[4][5]
In 2010,Fast Company named Lu the tenth most creative person in business for 2010.[6][2]
In January 2017, Lu joinedBaidu as group president and chief operating officer in charge of products, technology, sales, marketing and operations.[7] He stepped down on May 18, 2018.[8] In August 2018, he joinedY Combinator as the head of research and assumed control of YC China.[9][10]
In November 2019, Y Combinator decided to shut down YC China. Lu continues to fund startups under his new program, MiraclePlus.[11] MiraclePlus operates out of its head office in Beijing, and invests checks of $300K USD for 7% into early stage startups around the world.[12] Much like its parent Y Combinator,MiraclePlus operates two cohorts per year (one in the summer, and one in winter).
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