However, all of China’s leading AI firms were upended by the dramatic debut of DeepSeek, which took the industry by storm with R1, paving the way for an era of much more affordable AI models.

Now that Baidu has made the decision to open source, even if it isn't a DeepSeek moment, it is an important one for the global AI race. "This isn't just a China story.

According to Baidu, the reasoning-focused model rivals that of DeepSeek. “ERNIE X1 delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,” Baidu said of one of the new models.

Chinese tech giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence model, which it claims rivals DeepSeek's AI model across various benchmarks at a lower cost. Baidu introduced Ernie X1, a reasoning ...

Baidu was among the first Chinese companies to launch AI products following OpenAI's ChatGPT release in late 2022. However, its large language model Ernie, which Baidu claims matches GPT-4's ...

China's biggest public AI drop since DeepSeek, Baidu's open source Ernie, is about to hit the market By Kevin Williams, CNBC • Published June 29, 2025 • Updated on June 30, 2025 at 10:35 am ...