10 Things you Didn’t Know About Xudong Cao
Xudong Cao is a Chinese businessman and entrepreneur. He has made some remarkable contributions to the furtherance of autonomous automotive technology. He is currently the chief executive officer of the self-driving car company Momentum. We were interested in learning more about his career and his personal life. We looked into his history and made some interesting discoveries. Here are ten things you probably didn’t know about Xudong Cao
1. Xudong Cao is the founder of Momentum
According to Crunchbase, Mr. Cao not only runs Momentum, but he is also the founder and owner of the company. Momenta opened its doors for business in September of 2016. It is a new startup in the automotive technology sector, but the company has come a long way in a short time. The business is entering its fifth year of operation. It is achieving significant success that is rare for companies that are still in the infancy stage of development.
2. Mr. Cao was educated in China
We learned that Xudong Cao was educated in his home country of China. He enrolled in courses at Tsinghua University. There he pursued his education in engineering mechanics. He started the program in 2004 and completed it in 2008, earning his bachelor’s degree.
3. Cao is a tech geniuspro
According to Innovators Under 35, Mr. Xudont Cao stepped up to the plate at Momenta to lead a team of experts in advanced technologies including deep learning, semantic HD maps, data-driven path planning, and environmental perception. These are all complex technologies that are requisite for developing fundamental autonomous driving. Cao is a brilliant scientist who holds a mechanical engineering degree, but his talents go far beyond what the academic degree suggests.
4. He is an exceptional strategic planner
Part of the success experienced by Momenta is due to Xudong Cao’s keen knowledge of technology, along with the possibilities presented by combining various technologies, and his flair for strategic planning. Part of his goals includes developing technologies with associated products that are based on deep learning with vision-based technology. Also, he has succeeded in producing high-performance projects that bear two important features. They are easy to reproduce on a mass scale, and they are cost-effective. He and his team have already reached many of their established goals.
5. He led Momentato unicorn status quickly 6.
It’s not often that a new startup technology company achieves unicorn status. Momenta is one of the rare ones that reached a valuation that exceeded $1 billion in just two years after it was established as a business. By 2018, Momenta raised over $200 million which put it over the top of the mark of a unicorn, reaching this lofty goal in a mere two years. This is remarkable progress that is rarely seen in today’s competitive market, and it was possible because of the high confidence that investors had in the future success and the likelihood that Momenta would become a highly profitable company.
6. Cao was officially recognized with honors in his homeland
Xudong is the person responsible for the ideas and the dreams that have led to the development of an important technology company in China. He was the recipient of the MIT Technology Review’s distinction as one of the Innovators Under 35 honor for the year 2018 in the region of China. This is a prestigious award that is given to young entrepreneurs who reach significant, noteworthy levels of success before reaching the age of 35.
7. He worked for Microsoft before he launched Momenta
Before starting his successful technology company, Xudong Cao was employed at the Asian Research Division of the Microsoft Corporation. He worked as a scientist with the computer vision group. Part of his responsibilities included developing fundamental technologies that are used in some of the most popular tech devices including Xbox, How-old, and Bing. This helped him learn more about the world of technology from an application perspective as well as how the business end of such a company operates. Cao realized that he had ideas that could help to further the development of autonomous vehicles. He knew that he had ideas that could be transformed into realities under the right conditions and he was brave enough to take the chance.
8. Cao is a published author
According to his LinkedIn page, Mr. Cao worked with three other scientists/researchers to write a successful publication in an area of his expertise. The work is called “Face Alignment by Explicit Shaper Regression (CVPR12 Oral). This is a research-based publication that was published on June 16, 2012, by a verified academic journal. He has made significant contributions to this sector of the technology arena through in-depth research and study with a presentation of his findings.
9. Cao has worked his way up the corporate ladder in record time
Xudong Cao has worked for two notable companies in his career as a scientist and mechanical engineer. Although he only held two important professional positions, he did spend time working for others to gain a sense of how the tech industry worked. He left his position as an associate researcher with the Microsoft Corporation in Beijing, China, to accept a position at the SenseTime Group Limited. he was hired as a research director for the firm in April of 2015. After spending just 7 months with the company, he was promoted to the position of executive research director in October of 2015. He remained at the post as an executive leader for 11 months. in August of 2016, he left the job to establish his tech startup company Momenta.
10. Xudong Cao has a remarkable success story
Cao understands that the realization of autonomous vehicles is a future dream and that it could be another 20 years before this technology is fully realized. Still, he believes it to be the wave of the future, according to Tech Crunch. He has hedged his bets on the future of the technology by investing in research for the self-driving technology of the next generation. He currently sells semi-automated software as he keeps a foot in the door for the further development of automotive autonomy. The brilliant researcher earned his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics before joining Microsoft. He is an expert in AI research and has a firm grasp on many other related technologies that are combined in the applications that are used in the development of autonomous vehicle development. He comes from an academic and a hands-on practical approach that uses the knowledge yielded through his research to develop useful technology that is used in today’s modern world while keeping an eye on the future of the discipline.
