Liu Qingfeng (Chinese: 刘庆峰, born 26 March 1973, Tongcheng, Anhui, China) is a Chinese entrepreneur and AI scientist, best known as the founder and chairman of iFLYTEK, a global leader in speech recognition and artificial intelligence.
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Career
As a doctoral student at USTC, Liu pioneered China's first Mandarin speech synthesis system in 1998, achieving naturalness scores exceeding 4.0/5.0 in MOS testing. This breakthrough led to the founding of iFLYTEK in 1999 with his research team, commercializing speech technologies under China's 863 Program. Under Liu's leadership, iFLYTEK launched the world's first real-time speech-to-text engine for Mandarin in 2003 and developed the Xunfei Superbrain AI platform in 2014. The company listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2008 (SZSE: 002230), reaching a market cap of $14 billion by 2023.
Liu advises China's AI development plans, co-authoring the "Next-Generation AI Development Plan" in 2017 and promoting ethical AI guidelines at the UN AI for Good Summit in 2021.
Recognition
National Science and Technology Progress Award (2003, 2011)
MIT Technology Review's "Global 50 Smartest Companies" (2017)
Chair of ACL Asia Chapter (2019–2021)