Xiaomi's structural adjustment: split into artificial intelligence department, reporting directly to CEO Lei Jun

Yunzhong from Aofei Temple
Produced by Quantum Bit | Public Account QbitAI

Xiaomi announced yesterday that it would once again make large-scale organizational restructuring.

The most critical measure is to further strengthen the emphasis on the technical team, including appointing Cui Baoqiu as the chairman of the Xiaomi Group Technology Committee and splitting up the artificial intelligence department.

Lei Jun pointed out at an internal meeting that we must continue to strengthen our technological foundation, as technology is related to Xiaomi's survival and is the most important driving force and engine for Xiaomi's sustainable development.

Let’s take a look at Xiaomi’s new moves.

The first adjustment is Cui Baoqiu’s new job .

In this adjustment, Cui Baoqiu was promoted to group vice president and served as chairman of Xiaomi Group Technology Committee. Previously, Cui Baoqiu was vice president of Xiaomi's artificial intelligence and cloud platform.

Cui Baoqiu returned to China in 2012 and joined Xiaomi, where he established Xiaomi's artificial intelligence and cloud platform team and led Xiaomi's "cloud computing-big data-artificial intelligence" technology development route.

Lei Jun emphasized internally that the purpose of arranging Cui Baoqiu to lead the group's technical committee is to further strengthen the technical culture and engineering culture, focus on improving the group's technical direction decision-making, and increase efforts in the recruitment, training, appointment and incentives of technical talents, and lead the company to explore future technological trends.

Previously, Xiaomi had established a quality committee, with Lei Jun personally serving as chairman. After the listing, he appointed Yan Kesheng as vice president of the group and concurrently chairman of the quality committee.

After this job adjustment, Cui Baoqiu reports directly to CEO Lei Jun.

In addition to their working relationship, Cui Baoqiu and Lei Jun are classmates from the Computer Science Department of Wuhan University Class of 1987, and it is said that they were also classmates and roommates at the time.

The second adjustment is to split and establish a new department .

The Xiaomi Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Platform Department mentioned above is now divided into three departments: Artificial Intelligence Department, Big Data Department and Cloud Platform Department.

The newly established Artificial Intelligence Department is responsible for the technical research and development of AI and Xiaoai products. Ye Hangjun is the general manager of the Artificial Intelligence Department, Wang Gang is the deputy general manager, and Wang Bin is the director of the AI ​​laboratory.

Ye Hangjun received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in 2003. His research areas are computer vision and image retrieval. He has worked for IBM, Google, Tencent and other companies.

The Big Data Department is responsible for big data, search and recommendation. Ji Xu is appointed as the general manager of the Big Data Department, and Wang Fei and Xu Guoshi are deputy general managers.

Ji Xu's previous external position was general manager of Xiaomi Cloud Platform and Artificial Intelligence Product Department. He has also previously served as vice president of Sina and senior director of Zynga China.

The Cloud Platform Department is responsible for cloud technology, Xiaomi Cloud, operations, security and privacy. Feng Honghua is the general manager, and Chen Yang and Li Haifeng are deputy general managers.

Feng Honghua's previous Sina Weibo account was certified as: Director of Xiaomi's Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Platform Cloud Technology Department. Feng Honghua graduated from Tsinghua University and previously worked for Panasonic, IBM, Microsoft, Tencent and other companies.

This adjustment is Xiaomi's stepping up its efforts to promote the AIoT strategy from the organizational structure level. The new structure and appointments have promoted a group of young technical management talents, laying a solid foundation for organizational construction and talent reserve for Xiaomi to fully implement the "mobile phone + AIoT" dual-engine strategy.

The general managers of the three new departments also all report to CEO Lei Jun.

Liu De, Xiaomi's Organization Minister, pointed out: "Adding a series of departments to report to the CEO can be understood as reporting to the group headquarters. The Organization Department and the General Staff Department will assist Lei in management and help him share management work. While the group headquarters manages the business more finely, Lei can focus more on strategic directions and core matters."

In addition to the above adjustments, Xiaomi also established two new departments .

First, Internet Department 5 is responsible for the localization of overseas basic applications, browsers, information flow services and overseas Internet commercialization.

Second, the Internet Business Department is responsible for the commercialization planning and goal achievement of Xiaomi Group’s domestic Internet business.

In this adjustment, Xiaomi appointed a total of 14 general managers and deputy general managers in core management positions.

The following is the internal email regarding this adjustment: