Qi Zhang

Microsoft Corporate Vice President | CTO of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group | Senior Deputy Head of Microsoft Software Technology Center Asia

As a corporate vice president of Microsoft and CTO of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D (ARD) Group, Dr. Qi Zhang is responsible for driving Microsoft’s strategy for R&D activities in the Asia-Pacific region. In his capacity as the senior deputy head of the Software Technology Center Asia (STCA), Dr. Zhang leads the Microsoft Web Experience and AI Platform teams. Dr. Zhang also holds a position as chairman of the Microsoft Mobile Alliance Internet Service (MMAIS) Joint Venture.

Dr. Zhang joined Microsoft Redmond in 2002 and STCA in 2010. He founded the Search Ads team in 2011, leading products and services focused on big data, knowledge graph, content services, Edge, Business AI, and Azure AI Platform. His team has been instrumental to the hypergrowth of Bing Ads, contributing over $10 billion in revenue over the past nine years and working closely with US teams and Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) on foundational data and intelligence innovation for Office and Azure products. He was promoted to Partner in 2014. In 2018, he became the first Microsoft China employee to be honored as Distinguished Engineer for pushing the technology frontier for Microsoft. In 2022, Dr. Zhang was appointed to his current role as CTO of Microsoft ARD.

Dr. Zhang is an industry expert in digital advertising, machine learning, big data, and AI across a variety of technology, product, and business areas.  He holds more than 10 global patents and his research has been widely published. Dr. Zhang has a bachelor’s degree from Peking University, and MS and PhD degrees from Washington University in St. Louis.