Baidu
corporateBaidu is the pioneer of Chinese AI, having established its Institute of Deep Learning (IDL) in 2013 under CEO Robin Li (Li Yanhong). The hiring of Andrew Ng as Chief Scientist (2014–2017) to lead Baidu Research in Silicon Valley marked a pivotal moment for Chinese AI ambitions on the global stage.
Baidu's AI ecosystem is defined by two pillars. The first is the ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) series, progressing from ERNIE 1.0 (2019) through ERNIE 5.0 (2025), with ERNIE Bot (Wenxin Yiyan) as the consumer product. The second is PaddlePaddle, China's first and most widely deployed domestic deep learning framework, with over 11 million developers and 860,000+ enterprise users.
Baidu also develops the Kunlun XPU AI chips (now in their third generation), the Apollo autonomous driving platform (operating robotaxi services in multiple Chinese cities), and the Qianfan model-as-a-service platform on Baidu Cloud. Haifeng Wang serves as CTO, overseeing the ERNIE and NLP research divisions.
People
- Robin Li — Co-founder & CEO
- Haifeng Wang OpenReview — CTO & ERNIE Lead
- Yu Sun — Core Researcher (ERNIE)