Baidu CEO Gets Doused in Water While Giving Speech on Stage

The last thing you expect to see when a Chief Executive is on stage delivering a speech is for some random person to run up and douse them in water.

This is what happened to the CEO of Baidu, Robin Li, when he was delivering a routine keynote address.

An unidentified man who had an event pass, had jumped onto the stage and poured water all over the executive as he was ten minutes into a speech that introduced AI-powered valet parking service.

The man, wearing a black T-shirt, had poured a bottle of water over Li’s head. Li appeared frozen during the incident and then wiped his face and head and went on with the speech as planned.

“What’s your problem?” Li said in English to the man. “As everyone has just seen, there will be a variety of unexpected happenings on the road to AI,” said the CEO.

Li is headed to the Baidu artificial intelligence developers’ forum in Beijing.

No word on who the man was, but it didn’t stop Li from delivering his roughly 40 min speech before he left the stage. The man was taken away by police for investigating.

Baidu “strongly” condemned the act in a statement posted on Weibo, calling it “shameful” and “disturbing.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) and have not been compensated for this article.