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Shi Huang

Cao Ting, a leading artificial intelligence researcher and former research manager at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), has left the US tech giant to join Tsinghua University, as AI becomes a new front in the US-China tech rivalry.
According to the university’s website, Cao left MSRA in July to join Tsinghua’s Institute for AI Industry Research under Zhang Yaqin, a former MSRA managing director.
The Beijing-based MSRA, established by Bill Gates in 1998 to tap China’s “deep pool of intellectual talent” and once hailed as the “hottest computer lab in the world”, is under growing pressure.
US government restrictions on AI research in China, coupled with China’s own booming AI sector, has accelerated an exodus from the lab, casting uncertainty over the future of Microsoft’s key research hubs in Beijing and Shanghai.
Microsoft hired hundreds of researchers for MSRA, offering competitive pay and excellent working conditions. The lab pioneered Microsoft’s work on voice, image and facial recognition, as well as AI projects.
The Beijing lab became one of the world’s most important laboratories in the field, growing into Microsoft’s biggest research facility outside the United States and its first in Asia.
So much so that in 2004, MIT Technology Review called it “the hottest computer lab in the world” in a cover story.


Cao joined Microsoft Research Asia in March 2018 to lead its Edge AI direction.
She received her PhD from the Australian National University in 2013. She then worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Key Laboratory for Computer Architecture within the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
She then moved to industry, first working as a senior software engineer at Huawei’s compiler and programming language laboratory for a year and a half.
Her research focuses on Edge AI, large foundation model algorithms, AI inference systems and novel AI accelerators.
Her work has been published at top-tier computer systems conferences and has advanced the field of AI on edge devices, enabling the deployment of complex deep neural networks and large language models directly on consumer devices like smartphones and PCs, which can greatly reduce cloud operation costs.
Her advances have been integrated into products used by millions, including Microsoft Office, Windows, Bing and Huawei’s HarmonyOS.
However, there are obstacles to progress for Chinese working in the field.
In 2023, Microsoft’s Chinese researchers were reportedly barred from joining small teams with early access to GPT-4, an advanced artificial intelligence system developed by OpenAI, an organisation in which Microsoft is a major partner.
US officials also reportedly questioned the viability of maintaining a 200-person advanced technology lab in China and Microsoft later said it put restrictions in place to bar researchers from doing politically sensitive work.


At the same time, Microsoft has been opening labs in other parts of the world.
In January last year, Microsoft announced plans to open a new lab in Vancouver, Canada, and relocate some of its researchers from China there.
It also established a new research office in Tokyo in November to promote work in areas such as artificial intelligence and robotics engineering.
Singapore also became home to the first Microsoft research lab in Southeast Asia last month, with plans to drive research in AI and foster a new generation of talent.
But the future of the teams in Beijing and Shanghai, which form the core of Microsoft Research Asia centres in China, appears uncertain.
MSRA vice-president Liu Tieyan left the company last year and joined the newly established Zhongguancun College in September as its founding head and Communist Party secretary.
Liu had a number of senior roles at Microsoft, including head of AI for Science, a Microsoft Research initiative launched in July 2022 to advance fundamental research at the intersection of machine learning and the natural sciences.
The entire AI for Science team was laid off in June.
The most recent public reference to Cao and her job at Microsoft Research Asia was in an article published on the lab’s social media account on May 29.
In the article, she discussed computing technology that “is expected to enable edge-to-cloud devices to run large models directly from storage without additional AI accelerators”.
The South China Morning Post has contacted Cao for comment.


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Cao’s new role follows the tech giant’s decision to restrict work by Chinese scientists and relocate Beijing-based researchers to Canada


Cao’s new role follows the tech giant’s decision to restrict work by Chinese scientists and relocate Beijing-based researchers to Canada.


AI scientist Cao Ting leaves Microsoft lab for China’s Tsinghua University

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Cao’s new role follows the tech giant’s decision to restrict work by Chinese scientists and relocate Beijing-based researchers to Canada

Cao’s new role follows the tech giant’s decision to restrict work by Chinese scientists and relocate Beijing-based researchers to Canada