The Information recently reported that Microsoft has become The most frequented and successful company for its competitors to recruit AI talents. “Almost every company in the tech industry is looking for talent with AI skills and experience, and they might want to look at Microsoft,” the report said.
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include information robot, editing robot, writing robot and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
Citing The latest data, The Information says Microsoft has become The biggest poaching target for competitors Google, Amazon and Facebook. Over the past six years, the three companies have recruited at least 5% and at most 9% of their AI talent from Microsoft.
Microsoft has become by far the largest source of AI talent for these companies. 7 percent of Facebook’s AI talent comes from Google, and 9 percent comes from Microsoft, which is as close as it gets.
Data source: Paysa. Paysa is a website that provides data to help professionals compare salaries or make career decisions. Data for this article came from Paysa, based on 5,273 resumes collected by third parties or directly provided by users.
Microsoft has long been a big player in AI and has some strong products like Cortana, an intelligent voice assistant. But it seems that Microsoft is not getting as much attention as its competitors.
Microsoft’s deep pool of AI talent makes it the biggest poaching ground for its competitors. Three percent of Facebook’s AI talent came from Yahoo. Of Google’s AI talent, 2.6 percent came from Amazon and 5.3 percent from Microsoft.
Amazon’s AI talent comes from Microsoft (7.6%), Google (4.8%) and Facebook (1.3%).
Software engineering, and AI in particular, is a very competitive field with a relatively small pool of talent and not many people willing to move around a lot.
These data show that Microsoft’s AI talent pool is very deep. Of course, Microsoft is one of the largest technology companies in the world, with about 113,000 employees.
‘There’s also the fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to gain traction,’ Information said in the report. On the one hand, the numbers are also an indicator of poachability, or a signal of which companies’ employees are looking for new job opportunities.
As early as July 2011, Microsoft’s brain drain was noticed by the media. Forbes provided this chart In an article called “Winners And Losers In Silicon Valley’s War For Talent.” In the two-way flow of talent from Apple (AAPL), LinkedIn (later acquired by Microsoft), Yahoo (YHOO), Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG), Microsoft was the company with the least inflow and the most outflow of talent from its competitors.
Attack from Baidu and Tencent: poach big shots and bring research to Microsoft’s doorstep
There are no specific figures on how much OF the AI talent in China’s AI companies, especially big companies like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, comes from Microsoft. There are, however, no shortage of top names in the flow in this direction.
Take Lu Qi for example.
Mr. Lu is one of the most closely watched Microsoft executives, and he and Shen Xiangyang, another Executive vice president, are the top Chinese executives in the U.S. tech industry. Since joining Microsoft in 2008, Qi Lu has led Microsoft’s Apps and services division, responsible for the development of Office, Office 365, Skype, Bing, Yammer and many other businesses. He built The Bing search engine. Lu, who reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella within Microsoft’s executive suite, has remained a solid presence throughout the company’s top management shake-up.
Born in 1961, Lu qi graduated from Fudan University and Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD in computer science. He later worked for IBM and Yahoo, where he was a senior vice president. Mr. Lu joined Microsoft in 2007 to run the company’s Internet business and built Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Lu qi left The company in September 2016, Microsoft confirmed to Bloomberg. He was injured in a bike ride a few months ago, and his injuries have worsened. On January 17, 2017, Baidu officially announced the appointment of Qi Lu as President and Chief Operating Officer of Baidu Group. During this period, there is no lack of rumors in the industry Tencent is also in contact with Lu Qi, hoping to recruit Lu Qi company.
Robin Li, Pony Ma and Shen Xiangyang sit together to talk about artificial intelligence at the IT Leaders’ Summit in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province, April 2, 2017. Ma huateng said about AI talent, talent is very important, Tencent has recruited a lot of AI talent in the past year, but also set up a laboratory in Seattle, “Microsoft many people do not want to leave, so we had to set up next to.”
In response, Shen Xiangyang, Microsoft’s global EXECUTIVE vice president and AI leader, joked that baidu and Tencent are both doing research, which is a good thing — but not a good thing: having research on Microsoft’s doorstep.
The latest news shows that Yu Dong, a senior AI researcher at Microsoft, has joined Tencent’s CORE AI technology department. Dr. Yu joined Tencent in 2017 and is currently the outstanding scientist and deputy general manager of Tencent AI Lab, according to Tencent AI Lab website. Prior to joining Tencent, He worked at Microsoft For 19 years as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. He is a senior expert in speech recognition and deep learning. He has published two books and more than 160 papers. He is the inventor of more than 50 authorized patents and more than 10 pending patents, and one of the originators and main authors of CNTK, an open source software for deep learning.
In China, Microsoft Research Asia becomes’ Whampoa Military Academy ‘for AI talents
In the development of AI in China, Microsoft also plays an important role as a talent provider. Its Microsoft Asia Research Institute set up in Beijing, China, is known as the “Huangpu Military Academy” of China’s Internet, from which many outstanding talents have come out, almost supporting half of China’s AI industry.
The above is an incomplete list for example only.
Microsoft AI strategy changes: will continue to attract more talent to join
The latest change in Microsoft’s internal talent structure for AI can be traced back to September 30, 2016, when Microsoft announced the creation of a 5,000-person engineering and r&d team focused on ARTIFICIAL intelligence. The new unit, Microsoft AI and Research Group, will be led by Shen Xiangyang, Microsoft’s executive vice president. In addition to shen’s previous team, several other Microsoft engineering teams will join the new AI development team, including Information Platform, Cortana and Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics, led by David Ku and others. The combined Microsoft AI team will include AI product Engineering, basic and Applied Research LABS, and New Experiences and Technologies (NExT).
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
In a blog post at the time, Mr Shen said the new team “will equip Microsoft with the ability to create truly intelligent systems and products. I believe we have some of the best AI talent on the planet and we will continue to attract more talent”.
For the development of artificial intelligence enterprises, the importance of top talent is beyond doubt, it can almost determine the success of an enterprise.
Microsoft is clearly in for the long haul with AI: In a public speech last month, Microsoft CEO Sayta Nadella warned against the “AI craze”, saying it was a very long way to go and calling AI “the ultimate breakthrough”.