Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning
Baidu founded China's first corporate deep learning laboratory and opened a branch of it in Silicon Valley.
Why it matters
China entered frontier AI research as an independent player, four years before the state programme.
Kai Yu led the laboratory, and in 2014 Andrew Ng, who had run Google Brain, joined Baidu. Deep Speech was built there. Siting a branch in the Valley had a practical purpose: hiring researchers where they already are. It is one of the first cases of a Chinese company competing for the same people as the American ones.