Can Tencent catch up in the large model race after falling behind in the first step of the combination of production, investment, and research?

Recently, according to Leiphone News, Zhang Zhengyou, the director of Tencent AI Lab, will no longer serve as the director of the lab, and will be succeeded by Jiang Jie, the vice president of Tencent Group. However, Zhang Zhengyou will continue to serve as the director of Tencent Robotics X Lab.

Zhang Zhengyou's research capabilities are truly valuable. He is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow, a world-renowned expert in computer vision, multimedia technology, and robotics. He has made groundbreaking contributions in areas such as stereo vision, motion analysis, camera calibration, robot navigation, and immersive remote interaction.

He has published over 300 papers in top international conferences and journals, with over 70,000 citations and an H-index of 104, as well as over 250 patents. His invention of the planar camera calibration method, known as the "Zhang's method," is widely used worldwide. In 2013, he received the IEEE Helmholtz Time-Tested Award for his "Zhang's method".

Prior to joining Tencent in 2018, he was a partner at Microsoft, chief researcher and research manager at Microsoft Research, a senior researcher at the French National Institute for Computer Science and Automation (INRIA), and a guest researcher at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in Japan. His Microsoft research team contributed to many Microsoft products, including Windows, Office, Xbox, Kinect, and more.

After joining Tencent, Zhang Zhengyou served as the director of Tencent AI Lab and Robotics X Lab, as well as the chief scientist of Tencent.

The reason for the leadership change may be related to the advancement of large models. Jiang Jie, who succeeded Zhang Zhengyou, is currently the vice president of Tencent Group, vice president of Tencent's Enterprise Development Group (CDG), and vice president of the Technology and Engineering Group (TEG). Additionally, Jiang Jie is the person in charge of Tencent's Hunyuan large model.

After this leadership change, Tencent AI Lab may increase its investment in large models, connecting front-end demand with back-end research and development more closely, thereby accelerating Tencent's ability to implement large models.