Yangqing Jia
Also known as Jia Yangqing
Yangqing Jia is a researcher and engineer who created Caffe, a deep learning framework, during his UC Berkeley PhD. After time on the Google Brain project, he joined Facebook in 2016, where his teams built a large-scale AI platform for ads, news feed and search ranking. Alibaba named him vice president of technology in 2019, and he left Alibaba Cloud in March 2023 to found Lepton AI, which NVIDIA acquired in 2025 before he left NVIDIA in 2026. DeCAF, a paper he coauthored, receives ICML's 2024 Test of Time Award, and Going Deeper with Convolutions receives CVPR's Longuet-Higgins Prize in 2025. In July 2026 he founded Intent Lab, which launched Fleet, an autonomous agent team.
Timeline
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2013
Building Caffe at Berkeley
He builds Caffe, a deep learning framework, during his UC Berkeley PhD, and the library is released publicly in December 2013.
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2016
Building Facebook's AI platform
In 2016 he joins Facebook after time on the Google Brain project, and his teams build a large-scale AI platform for ads, news feed and search ranking.
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2019–2023
Vice president at Alibaba
Alibaba names him vice president of technology in 2019, and he leaves Alibaba Cloud in March 2023.
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March 2023
Founding Lepton AI
In 2023 he founds Lepton AI, a company that rents NVIDIA GPU servers and builds cloud management software.
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2024
An ICML Test of Time Award
He coauthors DeCAF, which receives the ICML 2024 Test of Time Award.
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2025
A Longuet-Higgins Prize
He also coauthors Going Deeper with Convolutions, which CVPR's Longuet-Higgins Prize honors in 2025.
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2025–2026
Lepton AI joins NVIDIA
NVIDIA acquires Lepton AI, and co-founders Jia Yangqing and Bai Junjie join NVIDIA. In 2026 he leaves NVIDIA.
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July 2026
Founder of Intent Lab
Intent Lab, which he founds in July 2026, launches Fleet, an autonomous agent team.
Sources and credits
Photo: daggerfs.com; Yangqing Jia; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: daggerfs.com. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
- Caffe (software) - Wikipedia
- "Deep Learning from a Mobile Perspective," a Presentation from Caffe Developer Yangqing Jia - Edge AI and Vision Alliance
- Briefing: Facebook AI executive joins Alibaba · TechNode
- Alibaba’s vice president of technology says trip to US was just to see doctor - Global Times
- NVIDIA acquires Chinese GPU cloud startup Lepton AI: report · TechNode
- ICML 2024 Awards
- IEEE Computer Society Celebrates 2025 Technical Community on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TCPAMI) Awardees
- Going Deeper With Convolutions - CVPR 2015 Open Access Repository
- Jia Yangqing Leaves NVIDIA After One Year; DGX Lepton Fails to Meet Expectations - KuCoin
- Former Alibaba Vice President Jia Yangqing founded Intent Lab, launching autonomous Agent team "Fleet" - TechFlow