Baidu

Public

BIDU

Chinese AI — Search, LLMs & Autonomous Driving

Founded 2000Beijing, China~37,000 employees

Website

Market Cap

$35B+ (Jun 2026)

Revenue

~$19B (2024)

Employees

~37,000

About Baidu

Baidu is China's dominant internet search company and one of the country's leading AI companies, investing heavily since 2010. ERNIE Bot (文心一言) — its LLM and AI assistant — had 200M+ registered users by 2025. Baidu's Qianfan platform provides enterprise AI APIs and its Apollo self-driving division is among China's most advanced autonomous vehicle programmes.

Company History

Baidu has been China's search leader since its founding in 2000. It began AI investment in 2010, hired Andrew Ng as Chief Scientist (2014-2017), and built one of the world's largest AI labs. ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration) has been in development since 2019. The ERNIE Bot launch in March 2023 was one of the most watched events in Chinese tech. Baidu's Apollo division has conducted over 50M km of autonomous driving tests.

Company Timeline

Mar 16, 2023
ERNIE Bot publicly launched — China's first major ChatGPT rival; stock swung dramatically
Aug 2023
ERNIE Bot opens to general public; 30M daily API calls reported
2024
ERNIE 4.0 Turbo — major performance improvements; Qianfan enterprise scale-up
2025
ERNIE 4.5 family; 200M+ registered ERNIE Bot users; ERNIE Speed/Lite APIs free

Products & Services

ERNIE BotERNIE 4.5Qianfan (AI Cloud Platform)Apollo (self-driving)PaddlePaddle (open-source framework)Wenku AI

Company Details

Focus Area

Chinese AI — Search, LLMs & Autonomous Driving

Stage

Public

Founded

2000

Headquarters

Beijing, China