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43. Robin Li
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Title: CEO, Baidu
Country: China
Age: 46
There’s a trio of internet kings in China, collectively known as “BAT” — Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent. For his part, Robin Li commands the market in internet search as the chairman and CEO of Baidu, China’s Google equivalent.
As with Google, Li’s Baidu is constantly investing in the future. In May, Baidu announced a partnership with Daimler, the maker of Chinese Mercedes-Benz, to provide software for their cars that allows drivers to access content from their smartphones. And in conjunction with BMW,Baidu is building a self-driving car prototype that it hopes to reveal by year-end.
Li, whose net worth is upwards of $11 billion, also said this year that his company would invest $3.2 billion in “online to offline” services, which allow mobile users to perform traditionally non-digital tasks such as buying movie tickets, hailing cabs, and finding deals at restaurants.
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