Inspur’s listed unit loses chairman as US-blacklisted firm seeks to capitalise on ChatGPT craze
- Wang Endong, 57, requested to step down as chairman, board member, and director of the strategy and sustainable development committee to ‘reduce concurrent posts’
- New chairman Peng Zhen has promoted idea of intelligent computing, built on the combination of cloud computing, big data and deep learning
Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co, the main listed entity of China’s biggest server maker, said its chairman has tendered his resignation, relinquishing several corporate roles at the company, which comes as the US-blacklisted firm is looking to capitalise on the current artificial intelligence (AI) craze on the mainland that has created significant demand for training of AI models.
The company said that 57-year-old Wang Endong requested to step down as chairman, board member, and director of the strategy and sustainable development committee at the firm, to “reduce concurrent posts”, according to a filing with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
The departure of Wang, who does not hold any shares in the firm, was effective immediately, the filing said.
In a separate filing, the company said it promoted its vice-chairman, 51-year-old company veteran Peng Zhen, who has many years of experience on its server product line, as the new chairman and strategy committee director.
Peng joined the firm in 1995 and has worked in different departments, including corporate positions and in server product line marketing. He climbed the ranks to become a vice-president at Inspur’s Beijing branch and general manager of the server line, before leaving the company in 2007.
After a stint at Huawei Technologies, Peng returned to Inspur in January 2015, and has been behind the company’s collaborative efforts with partners and clients to bring cloud technology to the industrial internet.