Liu Qingfeng

Overview

Liu Qingfeng is a Chinese technology executive. He is the president of iFlytek and, since April 2009, also its chairman.^[1] He has served as a deputy to China's National People's Congress since 2008.^[1]

A deputy to the National People's Congress is a member of China's national legislature. The chairman of a company leads its board of directors, while the president manages day-to-day operations, so holding both roles means overseeing the board and running the business.

Education and early research

Liu entered the University of Science and Technology of China in 1990 to study signal and information processing.^[1] He founded iFlytek in 1999 while still a Ph.D. student at the university.^[1][2]

Main contributions

Liu unveiled the SparkDesk large model on 6 May 2023. At the launch he said it would match ChatGPT in English by October, after three rounds of upgrades.^[3] The performance comparisons he made were company claims and were not independently verified.^[3]

At the Spark 4.0 launch in June 2024 he said the gap with OpenAI would likely widen again once GPT-5 was released.^[4] He compared the model with GPT-4 Turbo and stressed total self-sufficiency in the company's technology.^[4]

In 2026 he presented Spark X2.6 at the iFlytek Global 1024 Developer Festival in Beijing, on 22 October 2026.^[5]

Roles and career

Liu's roles at iFlytek have been president, and from April 2009 chairman. He has also been a deputy to the National People's Congress since 2008, which places him in China's national legislature as a public role alongside his company work.^[1]

Impact

Liu is the public face of iFlytek's large model work. His statements about Spark's progress against ChatGPT and GPT-4 Turbo show how the company framed its competitive position, and those statements were made by the company's own leadership rather than by independent evaluators.