BIDU Baidu Inc

By Liza Lin 

As Baidu Inc. accelerates efforts to expand its artificial-intelligence capacities, it is losing one of its brightest stars.

Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng said Wednesday that he was leaving the company to explore "a new chapter" in artificial intelligence, without providing details. In a statement posted online, Mr. Ng said he had been "privileged to learn from both the U.S. and Chinese AI communities--both of which are powerhouses."

"The U.S. is very good at inventing new technology ideas," he said. "China is very good at inventing and quickly shipping AI products. I'm happy also to have had an opportunity to contribute to the rise of AI in both China and the U.S."

A Stanford University adjunct professor, Mr. Ng was brought on to help the Chinese search-engine firm build out its artificial-intelligence capabilities. He headed four Baidu research labs, including one in Silicon Valley and Baidu's big-data and speech-technology groups. He split his time between Beijing and Sunnyvale, Calif.

"This is a big blow to Baidu's strategy on artificial intelligence and a setback of the company's internationalization," said Fang Xingdong, founder of internet strategy think tank Chinalabs.

Mr. Ng's departure comes two months after the firm hired Qi Lu , a former top executive with Microsoft Corp., to oversee key business units. Baidu said on its social-media platforms that Mr. Ng's departure was a loss, but that it was grateful for his contributions.

"Hey Andrew, our friendship lasts as long as the world endures," Baidu said.

A person familiar with Mr. Ng's plans said he isn't in talks to join a major tech company or a Baidu competitor, but plans to continue working in artificial intelligence. Those plans might include launching a startup or focusing on research, this person said.

Mr. Ng's departure comes as the Beijing-based firm is strengthening its focus on artificial intelligence. Facing increasing competition from domestic rivals Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., Baidu has said it would be focusing on its core strengths of machine learning and autonomous driving. Chairman Robin Li is seeking to use big data and such technologies to make its offerings more efficient.

Mr. Ng's 2014 hiring was considered a major coup for the Chinese internet giant, whose main business is search. Before joining Baidu, he led Google Brain, Google's deep-learning research project, and co-founded the Coursera online-education company. The 40-year-old grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore, and holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley.

Baidu needs to be more ambitious in its international expansion and expand its market share in the U.S. to retain high-level talent, Mr. Fang said.

Considered part of China's trio of internet titans together with e-commerce company Alibaba and social-networking firm Tencent, Baidu has seen its influence and market valuation slip in recent years. Alibaba and Tencent, once operating in separate areas of the internet, are starting to grow their investments in similar technologies.

Baidu named Vice President Wang Haifeng as the new head of its AI group to succeed Mr. Ng. Mr. Wang, a former president of the Association for Computational Linguistics, has been with Baidu since 2010.

He is also the department chair at Peking University's department for language information engineering. He was previously chief research scientist at Toshiba China R&D Center and held an assistant researcher position at Microsoft.

Yang Jie contributed to this article.

Write to Liza Lin at Liza.Lin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 22, 2017 08:06 ET (12:06 GMT)

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