Why did Xi choose Shanghai as the platform to advance AI self-reliance? Let’s dive into the details.
In a significant development on April 25, 2025, Chinese tech giant Baidu made waves by launching its latest AI model, Ernie 4.5 Turbo, along with a cutting-edge reasoning model named Ernie X1 Turbo. This move is part of Baidu’s ongoing efforts to bolster its AI product lineup and stay ahead in the fiercely competitive Chinese AI market landscape.
Strategic Continuity in Baidu’s Long-Term Vision
The launch of Ernie 4.5 Turbo is not just a random event but a strategic milestone that underscores Baidu’s decade-long journey in the realm of artificial intelligence. It all started back in 2019 when Baidu introduced its first ERNIE model, which outperformed tech giants like Google and Microsoft by achieving over 90 points on the GLUE benchmark for language understanding. What set ERNIE apart was its innovative approach of masking character strings instead of individual words—a technique that proved remarkably effective for processing Chinese language while maintaining high performance standards in English as well.
Moreover, Baidu has a rich history of groundbreaking achievements in AI, including advancements like the Streaming Multi-layer Truncated Attention (SMLTA) model for speech recognition in 2019. This innovation boosted recognition accuracy by an impressive 15% while ensuring computational efficiency—a testament to Baidu’s commitment to pushing boundaries and setting new benchmarks in AI technology.
Recent statistics reveal that Baidu’s ERNIE model now handles over 1.5 billion API calls daily—an exponential growth rate of 7.5 times—which indicates a substantial surge in adoption rates as the company continues to refine and expand its AI capabilities.
Rapid Model Releases Amid Fierce Competition
The unveiling of Ernie 4.5 Turbo mirrors the intense competitive environment prevalent in China’s dynamic AI sector where tech giants are engaged in a race against time to roll out state-of-the-art models and secure their positions at the forefront of innovation. With projections indicating robust growth prospects for the Chinese large language model market, companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are sparing no effort to capture sizeable market shares through relentless innovation and rapid product launches.
Tencent recently responded to Baidu’s move by introducing its upgraded reasoning model Hunyuan T1 while also announcing plans for substantial investments in AI infrastructure—a clear indication of how companies are balancing immediate revenue generation with long-term technological advancement strategies.
