He wants to create the favorite news app for Americans
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account (ID: HyperAI) , author: Come little nervous.
Synopsis: Since Shen Xiangyang announced his departure from Microsoft in November last year, everyone has paid close attention to the new direction of this great god in artificial intelligence. After an interval of half a year, the answer was finally revealed. He chose the American version of “News Break”.
Keyword: Shen Xiangyang, Chairman of News Break
Shen Xiangyang, a former Microsoft global executive vice president and a top expert in computer vision and graphics, finally updated his latest trend: investing in the US personal intelligence news platform News Break in his own name and becoming chairman.
Microsoft has been in office for 23 years and now opens a new chapter
In November 2019, Shen Xiangyang, then Microsoft ’s global executive vice president, announced his departure from Microsoft. This news has attracted widespread industry attention.
He is a veteran who has worked for Microsoft for 23 years and has built a search engine Bing
At that time, he wrote in an internal letter to employees:
Leaving Microsoft is the most difficult decision in my life … Today, Microsoft has been so successful. At this stage of life, I feel that it is time to start a new chapter.
Since then, Shen Xiangyang’s “new chapter” has been receiving much attention.
In February of this year, Shen Xiangyang officially left Microsoft, and to this day, his next stop is finally made public.
News Break official website announced this news on May 27 local time
It is reported that after joining this Silicon Valley star startup News Break, his next goal is to build the American favorite local news platform, focusing on corporate development strategy, core technology development direction, talent reserve and development Efforts to push News Break to a new level.
Shen Xiangyang said in an interview with GeekWire: “In the current era and the AI era, especially when we face the COVID-19 pandemic, we have this opportunity and responsibility to really consider the local community, and more Serve the local community well. This is really exciting for me and the News Break team. “
He also said, “News Break has changed the way news and information are published and shared, bringing people and communities closer together. It has great potential.”
For Shen Xiangyang ’s joining, News Break founder and CEO Zheng Zhaohui said:
Xiangyang and I realized that although people’s thinking is global, life is still localized. As one of the smartest people in the technology industry, Shen Xiangyang brings a wealth of technical leadership and business acumen to the company. We will use these advantages to build News Break into the world’s top local smart news platform.
Zheng Zhaohui and Shen Xiangyang are old friends who have known each other for more than 15 years
News Break: the top three in the US App Store list
News Break is not well-known in China, but it is a star startup in the United States.
The company was founded in 2015 by Silicon Valley founding team Zheng Zhaohui and Ren Xuyang, with Zheng Zhaohui as the companyCEO and Yahoo co-founder Yang Zhiyuan (Jerry Yang) served as chief advisor.
In May 2017, News Break announced the completion of Series B financing, with investors Ding Lei, IDG and Zhenge Fund. According to public information, in April 2016, News Break announced the completion of millions of dollars in Series A financing, with IDG Capital as the investor.
News Break sets up offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Shanghai
In simple terms, News Break is a news app based on the recommendation algorithm, which focuses on the US market and provides local community users with “Easily Accessible” local news information.
At the beginning of its founding, Zheng Zhaohui expressed his desire to move the one-point information model to the United States, so it was also called “One-point Information Overseas Edition”.
Technically, News Break implements news push through “Recommendation + Search + Subscription”. Like today’s headlines, it provides targeted recommendations based on users’ browsing preferences to achieve thousands of content.
News Break provides local news and headlines for the user ’s location
Since the launch of the iOS and Android apps in 2016, it has rapidly gained popularity. Today, its download ranks consistently among the top three in the US news category, and continues to maintain rapid growth.
According to App Annie data, its daily activity (DAU) exceeds 11 million and monthly activity exceeds 23 million. These data exceed the major news apps such as The New York Times, CNN News, The Washington Post, Yahoo News and SmartNews..
News Break surged in the first quarter of 2020
The number of downloads is free in the United States, iOS ranked third in the overall App list
News Break currently has more than 10,000 content providers, covering more than 20,000 local communities in the United States.
At present, the company has started to make profits, with more than 100 employees, and the development momentum is strong. According to Shen Xiangyang, the company plans to expand its technical team, or it will open an engineering center in Seattle. The company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley and branches in Beijing, Shanghai and Seattle are actively recruiting senior talents from all walks of life.
Shen Xiangyang: a great god with both ability and ability
Shen Xiangyang was born in 1966 in Lishui County, Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province, and grew up there.
After graduating from the Master of the University of Hong Kong, Shen Xiangyang went to Carnegie Mellon University for further study. He studied under the famous computer scientist and Turing Award winner Raj Reddy. He and Li Kaifu and Hong Xiaowen were brothers in the same class “http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU3NTQ2NDIyOQ==&mid=2247486583&idx=1&sn=432a20151cf8d904ba3170e222d2f08f&chksm=fd23fa3dca54732bdae40b1611d6a7639694d857f5f3f8e8ed4577ef4ed75ee5faef5e91c6f3&scene=21#wechat_redirect”> “Kai-fu Lee, Harry Shum mentor: rural India out of the Turing Award “The Winner” describes how he opened his computer vision research.)
In 1996, he obtained a doctorate in robotics from the School of Computer Science. After being introduced by Lu Qi, he joined Microsoft Research.
Shen Xiangyang (second from right in the front row) and colleagues from Microsoft Research Asia
In the twenty-three years of Microsoft, he was well-known for his research and development of computer vision and graphics in Bing search. He rose all the way from a researcher to Microsoft ’s global executive vice president. Chinese executives in the highest positions.
As early as 2006, Shen Xiangyang started working as a dual-employed professor at Tsinghua University and has served as a tutor for many Tsinghua doctoral students.
On March 5 this year, due to the epidemic situation, Tsinghua University held the first remote appointment ceremony in history, and the president of Tsinghua University Qiu Yong issued a reappointment letter to Shen Xiangyang for reappointment.
Shen Xiangyang became the first Tsinghua professor hired by video
The industry’s evaluation of Shen Xiangyang’s technical and human aspects is quite high.
As a mentor, he has no details about the guidance of students, from the subject direction to academic experience, research skills, and even help finding program bugs, but he also pays more attention to providing advice on the career development of students in life; >
As a colleague, he is easy-going and is in a high position but has no shelf;
As a team leader, he hires talents to avoid kinship, gain a deep understanding of the team, and discuss issues one-on-one with front-line programmers.
Because it is such a great virtuoso who has both integrity and ethics, when leaving Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Nadella wrote a farewell letter personally, affirming and thanking Shen Xiangyang for his contribution; Microsoft Greater China also issued a thank-you letter , Expressing disappointment and blessings to Dr. Shen.
I wish Dr. Shen Xiangyang everything going well and create greater glories.
Reference:
https://www.newsbreak.com/blog/harry-shum-appointed-chairman-of-the-board-of-silicon-valley-startup-news-break
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/former-microsoft-ai-bing-chief-harry-shum-joins-fast-growing-startup-news-break-chairman/
https://www.zhihu.com/question/335210295
https://www.zhihu.com/question/35937583