Tech companies are increasing their pace in developing AI technologies. Baidu, China’s largest search engine, is often compared to Google and is pushing hard to gain a global lead. According to its CEO, Robin Li, the company has developed a system to combine GPUs from different vendors and use them as a single compute cluster for AI training. This was highlighted in its Q1 2024 Earnings Call transcript.
Li mentioned in the call that Baidu is transforming from an Internet-centric business to an AI-first business with its generative AI, ERNIE, becoming the new core of its products in 2025. However, we expect Baidu to encounter headwinds, especially as it’s a Chinese company, and the US severely restricts the export of advanced technologies to China, such as the latest-generation Nvidia, AMD, and Intel chips, which are crucial to AI development.
