Chen Junbo, previously the head of algorithm at the Alibaba-backed DAMO Academy, has recently departed from his role to venture into a new business within the outdoor cleaning robots industry. Alongside two other executives from Alibaba and a vice president of a tech startup called Hengtian, Chen co-founded Youlu Intelligence, a company specialized in outdoor cleaning robots, according to a report by Leiphone on March 6.
Established in October 2022, Youlu Intelligence is engaged in robotics research and development, manufacturing, and sales. While the company is yet to secure financing or launch a product, sources reveal that an R&D team has been formed, and a product demo is anticipated to be available in the latter part of the year.
Chen Junbo, a graduate of the College of Computer Science and Technology at Zhejiang University, has an extensive background working for prominent tech entities such as Alibaba Cloud, Taobao, Cainiao, and DAMO Academy. Notably, during his tenure at DAMO Academy, Chen served as the senior algorithm expert at the autonomous driving laboratory, focusing on the research and development of decision-making planning control algorithms and simulation systems.
Alibaba undertook organizational changes towards the end of 2022, resulting in the retirement of Cheng Li, CTO of Alibaba. This alteration paved the way for Chen’s departure, sparking a vacancy once more at the company. DAMO Academy has been recognized as a leader in artificial intelligence and autonomous driving in China, as evidenced by the development of M6, the world’s first ultra-large-scale, multi-modal pre-training model holding 10 trillion parameters. This technology was lauded as a significant breakthrough in Chinese AI research and development projects in 2021 by MIT Tech Review.
Following his departure from Alibaba, Wang Gang, who was instrumental in the development of M6, founded a company focused on indoor cleaning robots, while Chen’s venture centers on outdoor cleaning robots. Among the founding members of Youlu Intelligence are Gu Zulin, the former CEO of Alibaba Robot and head of the unmanned vehicle division at Cainiao Network’s ET Lab, an executive from DAMO Academy, and Wang Jian, an alumnus of Zhejiang University.
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