Who is Lu Qi, head of Y Combinator’s new China arm?

Silicon Valley star accelerator is expanding to China with the help of a legendary Chinese engineer

Lu Qi is an expert in artificial intelligence and has worked for some of the world’s biggest search engines. (Picture: Bloomberg)

Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator has announced it’s launching a unit in China, naming former Baidu executive Lu Qi as CEO.

Nicknamed “The Harvard of Silicon Valley”, the incubator is known to be extremely selective: In March, more than 7,000 firms competed for 141 slots in one class. It has seeded over 1,900 startups, including big names like Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit. Even though it’s accepted overseas startups, this is the first time it’ll open a branch outside of the US.
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