Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU and HKEX: 9888) (“Baidu” or the “Company”), a leading AI company with a strong internet foundation, has secured the leading position in the China market for fourth consecutive year after showing strong growth in 2022, according to the recent IDC report “China AI Public Cloud Service Market Share, 2022”. The report shows Baidu AI Cloud has achieved an impressive 69.7% YoY growth in 2022, and highlights the continuous high-speed expansion of the AI public cloud service market in China, driven by Baidu’s successful efforts in implementing intelligent solutions across diverse industries including manufacturing, energy, finance, and public service. Baidu AI Cloud has also emerged as a leading player in the computer vision market, the largest and fastest-growing segment in the AI cloud industry, as well as in the natural language processing market, driven by the company’s leading development of multi-modal AI and early-stage generative AI applications, according to IDC.
The report foresees the rapid development of large models and generative AI in the next 3-5 years, positioning Baidu AI Cloud for promising opportunities to further bolster its growth.
Baidu AI Cloud’s Leadership in China’s AI Public Cloud Market
IDC observed China’s AI public cloud service market has experienced remarkable 80.6% year-on-year growth, reaching a market size of 7.973 billion yuan by the end of 2022. Baidu AI Cloud has consistently held the top market position in IDC’s biannual rankings since 2019, now marking the eighth consecutive time it has led the ranking.
Analyzing the achievements of Baidu AI Cloud, the IDC report attributes its success to the comprehensive breadth of the company’s AI solution, which includes self-developed chips, framework, and a wide range of AI capabilities. The platform stands out among AI software with its advancements in generative AI, multi-modal applications, large models, OCR, and conversational AI, IDC points out.
ERNIE Foundation Model Excels at Numerous Benchmarks
Baidu’s foundation model, ERNIE, has surpassed other major Chinese models in specific industrial evaluations, according to a latest IDC report on the technological abilities of AI models. The report recognizes Baidu ERNIE 3.5 as the leading large model in China, excelling in algorithmic model and industry coverage, securing full marks in 7 out of 12 core indicators. Baidu’s ERNIE large model is the only model to receive a full score in the “algorithmic model” and “industry coverage” indicators, which are the most crucial for measuring the depth of large model technology and its extensive application across industries.
Various enterprises, including the State Grid Corporation of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Taikang Life Insurance, and Geely, have collaborated with Baidu to develop eleven industry-specific large models.
Baidu’s ERNIE large model has recently been upgraded to version 3.5. ERNIE 3.5 has improved training throughput by 2x, and its queries per second (QPS) increased by 30x compared to ERNIE 3.0, which was released this past March.
Promising Outlook for Large Models
IDC believes that in the next five years, the upcoming generation of artificial intelligence, driven by large models and generative AI, is expected to lead the overall industry to return to a period of high growth.
According to IDC, cloud providers are at the forefront of research and investment in generative AI and large models. The implementation of large models and generative AI is currently in its early stages, and these capabilities can see faster updates and iterations on public clouds, bringing significant benefits to AI public cloud services in the short term.
Baidu’s Initiatives and Efforts in Nurturing an Ecosystem around Large Models
Earlier this year, Baidu AI Cloud launched the world’s first one-stop enterprise-grade platform, the Wenxin Qianfan Large Model Platform, which lowers the threshold and costs for enterprises to utilize large models. Baidu is actively promoting the development of the large model ecosystem, with over 150,000 enterprises applying to access the ERNIE Bot for testing and more than 300 eco-partners experiencing success in over 400 specific scenarios. In addition, Baidu has established a 1-billion-yuan venture capital fund to encourage innovation and growth in the large model ecosystem.
