Lenovo reshuffles leadership amid AI-driven growth and DeepSeek adoption
Lenovo Group, the world's largest maker of personal computers, has reshuffled its board and named a new chief financial officer (CFO) after three quarters of strong revenue growth, as the Chinese technology giant doubles down on artificial intelligence (AI) and moves to adopt DeepSeek's models.
Lenovo promoted John Thornton, who was serving as independent non-executive director, to lead independent director, taking over for William Grabe, who stepped down on Friday after 19 years on the board, the company said in a statement.
Thornton, a former Goldman Sachs president and now a director of global leadership at Tsinghua University in Beijing, is also the lead director at US companies Ford Motor and SparkCognition.
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Lenovo also appointed independent non-executive director Gordon Orr as the chairman of the compensation committee, and said that Tudor Brown exited the board after serving as independent non-executive director for 12 years.
Wong Waiming, Lenovo's current CFO and Laura Quatela, chief legal and corporate responsibility officer, will both retire on March 31 this year and join the company's board as non-executive directors.
Current deputy CFO Winston Cheng will replace Wong as Lenovo's new CFO from April, and current general counsel for the intelligent devices group David Carroll will become the new chief legal and corporate responsibility officer, according to Lenovo.
The leadership changes come as the company sees positive results from its all-out efforts in AI.
Lenovo on Thursday reported a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in third quarter revenue, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Net profit also more than doubled from the same period last year to US$693 million, the company said.
Revenue from its intelligent devices group, which includes Lenovo's PC and smartphone businesses, jumped 12 per cent year on year, driven by a broad portfolio of AI devices in China and around the world.
Lenovo's infrastructure business, which offers AI servers and liquid cooling solutions, also saw a nearly 60 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue.
Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing at Lenovo Tech World in Seattle on October 15, 2024. Photo: AP alt=Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing at Lenovo Tech World in Seattle on October 15, 2024. Photo: AP>
Group chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing said in an earnings call on Thursday that the company expects the "disruptive innovation" from the large language models provided by Chinese start-up DeepSeek to have a positive impact on all of Lenovo's businesses.
Hangzhou-based DeepSeek's breakthrough open-source models V3 and R1 rocked the global tech industry this year on news of their relatively low cost and strong performance.
DeepSeek has "improved AI efficiency" and "uplifted the potential" of AI models deployed locally on devices, Yang said in the earnings call. He added that Lenovo is set to launch an AI workstation capable of running the 7-billion-parameter version of DeepSeek-R1.
Lenovo has incorporated DeepSeek models into all of its AI devices, providing access to the R1 reasoning model in China through its Xiaotian AI agent, the company said earlier this week.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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