(Yicai Global) April 12 -- South Korea's Samsung Electronics, which is reportedly planning to make its own graphics processing units, has managed to poach a former artificial intelligence chip research chief from Chinese new energy vehicle startup Li Auto to help the phonemaker develop chips that determine image quality in mobile games.

Jiao Yang has recently joined Samsung as a core member of its GPU team to oversee project planning and team forming, tech media 36Kr reported.

Beijing-based Li Auto has not confirmed the news.

As the number of mobile game players is rising, Seoul-headquartered Samsung was recently reported to be intending to create a proprietary mobile GPU.Jiao left the NEV firm probably because "AI chips are not cost-efficient and thus not a priority of Li Auto," an industry insider said to 36Kr.

The AI expert has an impressive resume as he used to lead the chip department of Alibaba Group Holding-backed research institute called the Alibaba DAMO Academy, leading the development of AI inference chip Hanguang 800.

Before that, Jiao worked for Huawei Technologies and assisted in building the telecoms giant's teams in the United States and Shanghai while promoting the development of GPU products.

Besides Jiao Yang, Samsung has reportedly been in contact with another Chinese chip expert called Jiao Guofang, co-founder of GPU startup Biren Technology. Jiao Guofang was in charge of forming Qualcomm’s Snapdragon team and helped develop five generations of the American chip giant's Adreno GPU, as well as a GPU for Huawei’s Harmony operating system, according to public information.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi