By Charlie Campbell
Publication Date: 2026-01-25 12:00:00
A small wooden plaque with the golden number “1417” hangs on the wall of the entrance foyer of the cavernous Beijing headquarters of Chinese technology giant Baidu. It was taken from the hotel room across from Peking University where Robin Li founded the $50 billion company in 2000.
Early on, Li focused on solidifying Baidu’s enduring position as China’s leading search engine. However, he had long been fascinated by artificial intelligence (AI), having attended undergraduate courses at Peking and Tsinghua Universities. But when I came to the US for graduate studies in 1991, this interest was finally put on hold.
“I told my professor that I was interested in AI, but he told me, ‘Don’t do that, otherwise you won’t get a job if you do that!'” Li laughs.
Today it turned out that Li’s former teacher was shockingly wrong. The global AI market was valued at $244 billion last year, while AI chip pioneer Nvidia is the world’s most valuable company, valued at over $4 trillion. Li saw this…