Overview
Li Yanhong (born November 1968) is a native of Yangquan, Shanxi, and the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu.
Career
He graduated from Peking University in information management in 1991 and then took a master's degree in computer science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. While in the United States he worked as a senior consultant at Dow Jones, designed the real-time financial information system for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal, and was a senior engineer at Infoseek. His hyperlink analysis patent is one of the foundational inventions behind modern search engines.
At the end of 1999 Li returned to China with venture capital and founded Baidu Network Technology with Xu Yong; the company was established in Zhongguancun, Beijing in January 2000. Baidu listed on Nasdaq on 5 August 2005.