Bio

Robin Li, born Li Yanhong on 17 November 1968 in Yangquan, Shanxi province, is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Baidu, the Beijing-headquartered internet and artificial intelligence conglomerate he established in January 2000 with Eric Xu. He is also chairman of iQIYI, Baidu's video streaming subsidiary. As of May 2026, he leads Baidu's AI strategy through the ERNIE foundation-model family and the Apollo Go autonomous-driving platform.

Education

Li completed a bachelor's degree in information management at Peking University. He moved to the United States for graduate study and earned a Master of Science in computer science from the University at Buffalo in 1994, leaving the doctoral program with the master's degree to enter industry.

Career

Li joined IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones, in 1994. During this period he developed RankDex, an early link-analysis-based search-engine algorithm, in 1996. RankDex was the first hyperlink-based search-ranking system to receive a patent and is referenced in Larry Page's 1998 PageRank patent application as prior art.

He moved to Infoseek as a staff engineer from July 1997 to December 1999, then returned to Beijing to co-found Baidu in January 2000 with Eric Xu. Baidu launched as a Chinese-language internet search company and went public on the NASDAQ on 5 August 2005, with Li retaining the chief executive role he had held since January 2004. The company added a Hong Kong Stock Exchange secondary listing in 2021.

Li directed Baidu's pivot toward artificial intelligence as a strategic priority over the 2014 to 2017 period, recruiting Andrew Ng as chief scientist for the Silicon Valley AI lab and building the autonomous-driving program that became the Apollo Go robotaxi platform. The ERNIE pre-trained language-model family launched in 2019 and has become Baidu's principal generative-AI product line, with ERNIE 5.0 released in November 2025 and ERNIE X1 reasoning models earlier in the same year. The ERNIE Bot consumer product (Wenxin Yiyan) reportedly reached over 430 million users by Wang Haifeng's public comments in 2025.

Outside the operating role, Li was a member of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 2013 to 2018 and remains a frequent speaker at the Boao Forum and World AI Conference. Bloomberg's billionaires index estimated his net worth at approximately $5.5 billion in May 2025.

Notable contributions

• RankDex (1996, US Patent 5920859 issued 1999). The first patented hyperlink-based search ranking system; cited as prior art in Larry Page's 1998 PageRank patent.
• Baidu founding (January 2000). Co-founded the Beijing-headquartered Chinese internet company that became China's leading search engine.
• NASDAQ initial public offering (5 August 2005). Baidu's listing was the largest US technology IPO since the dot-com era at the time.
• AI strategic pivot (2014 onward). Directed the company's reorientation toward AI through the recruitment of Andrew Ng and the build-out of the Apollo Go autonomous-driving program and ERNIE language-model family.
• ERNIE family. Strategic oversight of Baidu's foundation-model portfolio, including the open-weights ERNIE 4.5 release in 2025.

Affiliations

• IDD Information Services (Dow Jones): Engineer, 1994.
• Infoseek: Staff Engineer, July 1997 to December 1999.
• Baidu: Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, January 2000 to present.
• iQIYI: Chairman.

Position in the field

As of May 2026, Li is the longest-tenured chief executive of any Chinese frontier AI lab, having held the role at Baidu continuously since January 2004. The Baidu AI portfolio is also the most diversified of any Chinese lab, spanning generative-model research through the ERNIE family, autonomous driving through Apollo Go, custom AI silicon through the Kunlunxin chip line, and cloud services through Baidu AI Cloud. The diversification places Baidu in a different competitive position from the Chinese frontier-startup cohort represented by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Z.AI, each of which is concentrated on foundation-model research.

Li's public profile combines Chinese-language and English-language presence at major business and policy fora. He has appeared at the Boao Forum, the World AI Conference, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, and has authored books on internet strategy and innovation in Chinese. The RankDex patent citation in PageRank gives him a documented place in the lineage of modern web search that has been recurrently cited in industry coverage of his AI strategy at Baidu.

Sources

• Robin Li. Wikipedia biographical entry covering education, the RankDex algorithm, the Baidu founding and IPO, and AI strategic direction.
• Robin Li Baidu Investor Relations. Official corporate biography.
• Robin Li Bloomberg Billionaires. Bloomberg net-worth and biographical profile.
• Robin Li Crunchbase. Crunchbase entry.
• Robin Li Research Starters biography. EBSCO Research Starters reference biography.
• Hypertext Document Retrieval System and Method. The 1999-issued US patent for the RankDex algorithm.