Photo on hostingjournalist
Photo by ... on ...

Lei Chen (陈磊)

CEO

Xunlei

POSITION

CEO

COMPANY

Xunlei

COUNTRY

China

Website

Xunlei

SCENE

Technology

What makes Lei Chen a Global Shaker?

He may share his name with a historical Chinese political figure, but this Lei’s focus is dedicated to the technological revolution that is blockchain.

Founded in 2003, Xunlei (迅雷) — which literally translates to “thunderbolt” — is an internet service provider that also supports a download manager and peer-to-peer file-sharing software. It supports HTTP, FTP, eDonkey, and BitTorrent protocols. Xunlei sets up its own storage servers to backup files that are not active; this feature is known as a high-speed channel and allows Xunlei users to retrieve data that are no longer being shared by peers.

“We will use artificial intelligence to process users’ own data to help us to service them better, but we don’t want to know what artificial intelligence understands about our users,” said Lei, as reported by News18.

For Xunlei, Lei Chen (陈磊) has led initiatives for technological innovation in cloud computing, related AI, and strategic investments. Shortly after his appointment as CEO in 2017, Xunlei announced that the company would boost its blockchain offering by releasing a blockchain-based product named OneThing Cloud. The new conceptual product, OneThing Cloud mini, will be the world’s first phone-based shared computing smart device and is set to launch in 2019. It is designed to aggregate idle computing resources from spare smartphones and convert these resources into enterprise-level cloud services.

Before running Xunlei, Lei was the chief executive officer of Tencent Cloud Computing (Beijing) Ltd. , a wholly owned subsidiary of Tencent Holdings Limited or Tencent.

Lei has been awarded with several honors, such as China’s Most Influential People for Cloud Computing (2014), Annual Luminaries in Internet Industry (2015), CDN’s Most Influential People (2016), and Annual Leader of Global Blockchain (2017).

Last updated: April 23, 2019