Robin Li Yanhong (; born 17 November 1968) is a Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of Chinese multinational

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is a company that focuses primarily on the manufacturing, support, research and development of—most commonly computing, telecommunication and consumer electronics–based—technology-intensive products and ...

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

. As of May 2025, his net worth was estimated at US$5.5 billion by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''. Li studied

information management Information management (IM) is the appropriate and optimized capture, storage, retrieval, and use of information. It may be personal information management or organizational. Information management for organizations concerns a cycle of organiz ...

Peking University Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...

and computer science at the

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

. In 1996, he created

RankDex Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

."About: RankDex"
rankdex.com; accessed 3 May 2014. In 2000, he founded Baidu with Eric Xu. Li has been CEO of Baidu since January 2004. The company was listed on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

on August 5, 2005. Li was a member of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 2013 to 2018. During his tenure as CEO of Baidu, Li has been criticized for a number of controversies, including the death of Wei Zexi, advertising of unqualified hospitals on Tieba, and ad fraud.

Early life and education

Li was born in Yangquan, Shanxi Province, where he spent most of his childhood. Both of his parents were factory workers. Li was the fourth of five children, and the only boy. He earned a Bachelor of Management with a major in

from

. In fall 1991, Li went to the

in New York to study for a doctorate in computer science. He left the doctoral program with a master's degree in 1994.

RankDex

In 1994, Li joined IDD Information Services, a

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

division of

Dow Jones and Company Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (also known simply as Dow Jones) is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp, and led by CEO Almar Latour. The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Barron's'', ''MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'', ' ...

, where he helped develop a software program for the online edition of ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

''. He also worked on improving algorithms for search engines. He remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997. In 1996, while at IDD, Li created the

Rankdex Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

site-scoring algorithm for search engine page ranking.

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

cofounder

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...

filed a patent for the

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. Accordin ...

search algorithm, two years later in 1998, which references Li's work on RankDex. Li later used his Rankdex technology for the Baidu search engine.

Baidu

Li worked as a staff engineer for

Infoseek Infoseek (also known as the "big yellow") was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch. Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Infoseek was bought by The W ...

, a pioneer internet search engine company, from July 1997 to December 1999. An achievement of his was the picture search function used by Go.com. Since founding Baidu in January 2000, Li has turned the company into the largest Chinese search engine, with over 80% market share by search query, and the second largest independent search engine in the world. On 5 August 2005, Baidu completed its IPO on

, and in 2007 was included in the

-100 Index.

Recognition

In 2001, he was named one of the "Chinese Top Ten Innovative Pioneers". In 2002 and 2003, he was named one of the "IT Ten Famous Persons". In April 2004, he was named in the second session of "Chinese Software Ten Outstanding Young Persons". In December 2005, he was named one of the "CCTV 2005 Chinese Economic Figures of The Year". In August 2014, Li was appointed by the United Nations Secretary General as co-chair of the Independent Expert Advisory Group on Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.

Personal life

Li is married to Dongmin Ma, who also works for Baidu. They have four children and live in Beijing, China.

References

External links

"NEWSMAKER-Baidu founder rules China's Web with pragmatism"
by Melanie Lee, ''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

'', 19 January 2010.
Robin Li profile
. ir.baidu.com; accessed 3 May 2014.

. September 2009; accessed 3 May 2014. *; accessed 3 May 2014. {{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Robin 1968 births Living people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople 21st-century inventors Baidu people Businesspeople from Shanxi Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople in software Chinese billionaires Chinese computer businesspeople Chinese computer scientists Chinese inventors Chinese software engineers Chinese technology company founders Dow Jones & Company people Engineers from Shanxi Internet pioneers Peking University alumni People from Yangquan University at Buffalo alumni Members of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Members of the 13th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference