Yu Liu (entrepreneur)


Yu Liu, also known as Eric Liu, is a Chinese entrepreneur and the founder of One Cloud Technologies. Since 2015, Liu has been the head of Alibaba Group's language business unit. Liu is also a member of and a special advisor to Mobike.

Early life

Liu was born in Beijing, China. He attended high school at Shanghai High School and received his bachelor degree from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. While in college, he was the managing editor of the campus daily, the Vassar Miscellany News.

Career

In 2011, Liu built the / dual-site crowdsourcing platform, one of the earliest and largest Internet-based language services in China, and was selected to be a 2011 Ashoka Changemaker, the only finalist from the country. The platform had been operated by One Cloud Technologies until Alibaba announced its acquisition in August 2015. Early investors included Xu Xiaoping, Anna Fang, Zhenfund, Sequoia China and CBC Capital.
After the acquisition, Liu joined Alibaba Group to become the head of its language business unit. During his keynote speech at in Portland, Liu stated that the mission of Alibaba's language unit is to "prepare for a future without language barriers". In January 2017, Liu announced that Alibaba will make a significant investment to integrate artificial intelligence into language technologies. Aside from his role at Alibaba, Liu is a special advisor to Mobike.