PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Haixun Wang

Also known as Wang Haixun, 王海勋

Haixun Wang is a computer scientist whose work connects graph systems with machine understanding of text. He earned a computer science PhD at UCLA in 2000, spent nine years as a research staff member at IBM's Watson Research Center, and in 2009 joined Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, where he coauthored the Probase taxonomy in 2012 and the Trinity graph engine in 2013. After working on natural language processing at Google, Facebook and Amazon, he served as a vice president at WeWork and Instacart. The ACM named him a Fellow in 2024 for foundational work on graph-based systems and their application to text understanding. Since December 2024, he is VP of Engineering and Head of AI at EvenUp, where he builds LLM support for legal and medical document understanding.

Now at
EvenUp and University of Washington
Badges

Timeline

  1. By 2000

    Shanghai Jiao Tong and UCLA

    He earns bachelor's and master's degrees at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a computer science PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000.

  2. 2000–2009

    Research staff at IBM Watson

    From 2000 to 2009, he is a research staff member at IBM's Watson Research Center, and he serves as technical assistant to Stuart Feldman from 2006 to 2007 and to Mark Wegman from 2007 to 2009, both senior computer science leaders at IBM Research. The 2003 KDD paper “Mining concept-drifting data streams using ensemble classifiers,” coauthored with Wei Fan, Philip S. Yu and Jiawei Han, proposes training weighted ensembles of classifiers on data streams whose concepts drift.

  3. 2009–2013

    Probase and Trinity at Microsoft

    In 2009, he joins Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, where he leads research in databases, the semantic web, graph data processing systems and distributed query processing. The 2012 SIGMOD paper on Probase, written with Wentao Wu, Hongsong Li and Kenny Q. Zhu, describes a probabilistic taxonomy for text understanding with 2.7 million concepts built from 1.68 billion web pages. In 2013, he coauthors the Trinity paper with Bin Shao and Yatao Li on a graph engine over a distributed memory cloud that serves low-latency queries and high-throughput analytics on billion-node graphs.

  4. 2013–2015

    ICDM and ICDE paper awards

    He wins the ICDM 10-year best paper award in 2013 and a best paper award at ICDE in 2015.

  5. 2013–2018

    NLP at Google, Facebook, Amazon

    From 2013 to 2015, he works on natural language processing at Google Research. At Facebook, from 2015 to 2017, he leads the NLP team on query and document understanding. Amazon makes him Director of Natural Language Processing in 2017, a post he holds until 2018.

  6. 2018–2024

    VP at WeWork and Instacart

    He is VP of Engineering and Distinguished Scientist at WeWork from 2018 to 2020 and at Instacart from 2020 to December 2024. At Instacart, he leads the Algorithms team, which applies machine learning to e-commerce and fulfillment.

  7. 2024

    An ACM Fellowship

    The ACM names him a Fellow in 2024 for foundational work on graph-based systems and their application to text understanding. The ICDE 10-Year Influential Paper Award also goes to him in 2024.

  8. Since December 2024

    Head of AI at EvenUp

    He joins EvenUp in December 2024 as VP of Engineering and Head of AI, building LLM support for legal and medical document understanding. He is also an affiliate professor at the University of Washington.

Career

  1. Since 2024EvenUpVP of Engineering and Head of AI
  2. NowUniversity of WashingtonAffiliate Professor
  3. 2020–2024InstacartVP of Engineering and Distinguished Scientist
  4. 2018–2020WeWorkVP of Engineering and Distinguished Scientist
  5. 2017–2018AmazonDirector of Natural Language Processing
  6. 2015–2017MetaNLP Team Lead
  7. 2013–2015Google Research
  8. 2009–2013Microsoft Research Asia
  9. 2000–2009IBMResearch Staff Member, Technical Assistant to Stuart Feldman

Education

  1. 2000University of California, Los AngelesPhD
  2. Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityBachelor's and Master's degrees

From the biography.

  1. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Haixun Wang. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Haixun Wang. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Haixun Wang. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Washington. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Haixun Wang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Haixun Wang | UW Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering ee.washington.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Haixun Wang | alphaXiv alphaxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Probase: A Probabilistic Semantic Network for Text Understanding by Haixun Wang - SFU Natural Language Laboratory natlang.cs.sfu.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Mining concept-drifting data streams using ensemble classifiers for KDD 2003 - IBM Research research.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Probase: Building a Probabilistic Ontology from the Web | UCSB Computer Science cs.ucsb.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Probase: A Probabilistic Taxonomy for Text Understanding - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Trinity: A Distributed Graph Engine on a Memory Cloud - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. EvenUp Law Celebrates Haixun Wang’s Recognition as a 2024 ACM Fellow - EvenUp Law evenuplaw.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. KDD 2026 Special Day: Data Day kdd2026-data-day.pages.dev. Checked 21 October 2026.