Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning
Baidu opened in Cupertino, in Silicon Valley, a branch of its Institute of Deep Learning, which was already working in China.
Why it matters
China entered frontier AI research as an independent player, four years before the state programme.
Kai Yu, Baidu's director of multimedia, was hiring the Valley branch's first researcher; by The Register (April 2013) the Cupertino institute is the counterpart of a facility in China, announced back in January. In 2014 Andrew Ng, who had run Google Brain, joined Baidu. Deep Speech is signed not by the institute but by Baidu Research - Silicon Valley AI Lab, with Ng among the authors. 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.