Overview

• Baidu unveiled ERNIE 4.5, a multimodal foundation model, and ERNIE X1, a reasoning-focused model, claiming superior performance at significantly lower costs than competitors like OpenAI and DeepSeek.
• ERNIE 4.5 integrates text, image, audio, and video processing, while ERNIE X1 is designed for advanced reasoning tasks such as logical inference and complex calculations.
• The company has made its chatbot services free ahead of schedule and plans to open-source its AI models by June 30, 2025, to encourage global adoption and innovation.
• Baidu’s models are priced to be highly cost-efficient, with ERNIE 4.5 costing just 1% of GPT-4.5 and ERNIE X1 priced at half the cost of DeepSeek R1.
• The announcement has positively impacted Baidu’s stock price, reflecting market optimism about its competitive position in the global AI race.