SHENZHEN, China, May 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tencent Holdings Limited ("Tencent") (HK: 00700), a leading provider of Internet value-added services in China, announced today the opening of a new AI Lab in Seattle and the appointment of top speech recognition expert Dr. Yu Dong as deputy director of the AI Lab. Dr. Yu will oversee the operation and management of the AI Lab in Seattle to drive Tencent's research on speech recognition and natural language processing.

"Dr. Yu Dong is an expert on speech recognition and deep learning. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Yu, and are confident that his addition to the team will serve to further strengthen Tencent's AI technology," said Dr. Zhang Tong, Executive Director of AI Lab. "We hope that AI Lab will become more than a laboratory, but a connector. By bringing together the world's leading experts in the field, we hope to further drive fundamental research on AI to expand its influence and enhance its practicality."

Dr. Yu Dong, Deputy Director of AI Lab said, "I'm excited to join AI Lab. Over the past decade, Tencent has accumulated abundant experience in application scenarios, developed a massive data bank, established powerful computing capabilities, and built an outstanding team of technology experts; all which have helped form the foundation of in-depth research and AI application at Tencent today. With the establishment of the AI Lab in Seattle, I believe that there will be more top talent joining AI Lab to help further promote AI development around the world."

Dr. Yu Dong is one of the leading researchers who first applied deep learning in speech recognition, and has contributed significantly towards the development of speech recognition technology. He is an author of two books and a large number of theses, a holder of 60 patents and one of the founders and leading author of CNTK, an open source deep learning toolkit. Prior to joining Tencent, he was the principal researcher of Speech and Dialog Group at Microsoft, an adjunct professor at Zhejiang University, a visiting professor at University of Science and Technology of China and a visiting researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He was also honored with the Best Paper Award by the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2013 and 2016. Dr. Yu is currently a member of the IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee. He has served the editorial boards of IEEE / ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and other journals. Dr. Yu received a BSc degree in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, an MSc degree in pattern recognition and intelligent control from the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, an MSc degree in computer science from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a PhD degree in computer science from the University of Idaho.

About Tencent

Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Every day, hundreds of millions of people communicate, share experiences, consume information and seek entertainment through our integrated platforms. Tencent's diversified services include QQ, Weixin/WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com and Tencent News for information and Tencent Video for video content.

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The Company is one of the constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Tencent seeks to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a mutually beneficial environment for partners, and staying close to users.

About Tencent AI Lab

Established in April 2016, Tencent AI Lab focuses on both fundamental research and practical application of artificial intelligence. It aims at continuous improvement of AI's capability in understanding, decision-making and creativity, while providing strong AI technical support to Tencent's businesses. AI Lab's vision is to "Make AI Everywhere" for the benefit of people in all aspects of life. Its research focuses on four key areas: machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing. To serve the needs of Tencent's diversified businesses, it is looking at four areas for AI application: content, social, online games and cloud services. At present, more than one hundred Tencent products, including Weixin/WeChat, QQ and Tian Tian Kuai Bao, use AI Lab's technology.

AI Lab has a research team of more than 50 world-class AI scientists and a team of over 200 engineers to convert research results into applications.

SOURCE Tencent AI Lab