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Baidu

Baidu develops the ERNIE foundation-model family, AI cloud infrastructure and Apollo Go autonomous driving. Its search and application businesses provide distribution for generative AI, while cloud and robotaxi services bring the technology into commercial deployment.

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Baidu
Logo: BaiduSource details

At a glance

Founded in January 2000, Baidu expanded from internet search into deep learning, cloud infrastructure and autonomous driving. PaddlePaddle and the ERNIE model family underpin its AI platform, while Apollo Go takes its autonomous-driving research into transport services. Its current business includes AI infrastructure, applications and marketing products alongside legacy services. Public disclosures distinguish these operating categories from total group revenue and do not establish an AI annual recurring revenue figure.

Sources checked . Financing, revenue run rates and recognized revenue are distinguished below.

Company milestones

Revenue, funding, product launches and major company events, newest first. Expand the earlier milestones for more history.

  1. Core AI-powered Business reaches RMB12.5 billion

    Baidu reported Q2 2026 Core AI-powered Business revenue of RMB12.5 billion, up 25% year over year. AI Cloud Infra contributed RMB7.3 billion; total company revenue was RMB31.3 billion.

    Source: Baidu Q2 2026 results, 18 August 2026 ↗

  2. ERNIE 5.1 receives an official release

    Baidu announced ERNIE 5.1, derived from the ERNIE 5.0 pre-training foundation. The release emphasized improved reasoning and agent capabilities, with elastic training and a disaggregated reinforcement-learning infrastructure.

    Source: Baidu ERNIE 5.1 official release, 9 May 2026 ↗

  3. ERNIE 5.0 adds native omni-modal modeling

    Baidu unveiled ERNIE 5.0 at Baidu World 2025 as its first native omni-modal foundation model. Its annual report records an updated version in January 2026, separating the initial unveiling from later improvements.

    Source: Baidu FY2025 annual report, filed 17 March 2026 ↗

  4. Baidu and Uber agree global robotaxi deployment

    Baidu and Uber announced a multiyear partnership to deploy thousands of Apollo Go vehicles outside the United States and mainland China. Initial deployments were planned for Asia and the Middle East.

    Source: Baidu and Uber joint partnership announcement, 15 July 2025 ↗

  5. Ten ERNIE 4.5 variants are open-sourced

    Baidu released ten ERNIE 4.5 model variants under Apache 2.0, spanning dense and mixture-of-experts architectures. The release included language and vision-language models, with associated development tools built on PaddlePaddle.

    Source: Baidu open-source ERNIE 4.5 announcement, 30 June 2025 ↗

  6. ERNIE 4.5 and reasoning model X1 launch

    Baidu introduced multimodal ERNIE 4.5 and the reasoning-focused ERNIE X1. It also made ERNIE Bot free ahead of its earlier schedule, widening access to the company’s hosted generative-AI products.

    Source: Baidu-issued ERNIE 4.5 and X1 announcement, 16 March 2025 ↗

  7. ERNIE 4.0 advances the foundation-model line

    Baidu introduced ERNIE 4.0 at Baidu World 2023, demonstrating improvements in understanding, generation, reasoning and memory. The announcement also connected the model to a broader portfolio of AI-native applications.

    Source: Baidu-issued ERNIE 4.0 announcement, 17 October 2023 ↗

  8. ERNIE Bot opens invited testing

    Baidu introduced ERNIE Bot for an initial group of invited users. Enterprise customers could apply for API access through Baidu AI Cloud, marking a product launch distinct from unrestricted public availability.

    Source: Baidu-issued ERNIE Bot announcement, 16 March 2023 ↗

  9. ERNIE establishes a knowledge-enhanced language framework

    Baidu developed ERNIE as a continual-learning semantic-understanding framework. Its official 2019 guide describes pre-trained models that combine data and knowledge with PaddlePaddle training for a range of natural-language tasks.

    Source: Baidu official ERNIE framework guide, September 2019 ↗

  10. Project Apollo opens the autonomous-driving stack

    Baidu announced Project Apollo as an open autonomous-driving platform combining software, vehicles, hardware and cloud services. The announcement outlined staged technology releases and a partner ecosystem rather than immediate unrestricted driverless operations.

    Source: Baidu-issued Project Apollo announcement, 18 April 2017 ET ↗

  11. PaddlePaddle open-source program is announced

    Baidu announced plans to open-source PaddlePaddle, an internally developed deep-learning platform already used in search, advertising and other products. A prerelease alpha was available, with the documented GitHub release scheduled for September 30.

    Source: Baidu-issued PaddlePaddle open-source announcement, 1 September 2016 ↗

  12. Baidu is founded

    Baidu was founded in January 2000 and built an internet-search business. Its original filing records the subsequent launch of Baidu.com search services and the beginning of paid-search revenue in September 2001.

    Source: Baidu original registration filing: January 2000 founding ↗

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