Baidu, Inc.

Baidu, Inc. is a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company with a strong internet foundation. The company has invested in AI since 2010 to advance its technological capabilities, enhance search functionality, and boost monetization. Its AI capabilities provide foundational technologies for all its businesses. Baidu launched ERNIE Bot, a conversational AI bot powered by ERNIE, its in-house foundation model, in the first quarter of 2023. The company has expanded the ERNIE family of models, launching ERNIE 3.5 in May 2023. According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report issued in July 2023, ERNIE 3.5 excelled in areas such as algorithm, industry coverage, developer tools, and ecosystem. In October 2023, Baidu launched ERNIE 4.0 (EB4), a GPT4-type model demonstrating human-level performance in understanding, content generation, complex reasoning, and memory retention. In June 2024, the company launched ERNIE 4.0 Turbo, designed for faster and lower-cost operation for typical use cases compared to ERNIE 4.0. Baidu uses the ERNIE family of models to renovate its products and offerings, providing AI-native experiences. In 2025, the company accelerated model iteration. In March 2025, Baidu released ERNIE 4.5, its first flagship foundation model with multimodal capabilities, and ERNIE X1, its first reasoning model with best-in-class function calling.