Baidu Unveils Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5, Strengthening China’s AI Presence

Chinese tech giant Baidu has introduced two new artificial intelligence models, Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5, aiming to rival leading AI systems from OpenAI and DeepSeek, Business Insider reports.

The company claims its models offer high performance at significantly lower costs, reinforcing China’s growing role in the global AI race.

Baidu describes Ernie X1 as a reasoning model that matches DeepSeek’s R1 model in capability while costing only half the price. Additionally, the multimodal foundation model Ernie 4.5 reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 on multiple benchmarks while being priced at just 1% of GPT-4.5’s cost.

The cost-efficiency of Baidu’s models is drawing industry attention, as AI development becomes increasingly expensive. Analysis by Bernstein Research indicates that DeepSeek’s models are already 20-40 times cheaper than OpenAI’s, and Baidu’s latest offerings push the pricing gap even further.

Baidu plans to integrate Ernie 4.5 and X1 into its existing product ecosystem, including Baidu Search, China’s most widely used search engine. Additionally, the company announced that its chatbot, Ernie Bot, will be available to the public starting April 1—ahead of schedule.

Baidu is also embracing the open-source trend, a move that has helped other Chinese AI companies, like DeepSeek, drive adoption. CEO Robin Li emphasized the importance of open-source models, stating that making models publicly available encourages experimentation and widespread use. The Ernie 4.5 series will be open-sourced on June 30, though Baidu has not confirmed whether X1 will follow suit.

Baidu’s advancements come as China intensifies efforts to become a global AI leader by 2030. Other Chinese companies, including Alibaba, have also made strides, with recent releases like the QwQ-32B open-source model and the AI agent Manus.

With DeepSeek expected to launch its R2 model soon, Baidu’s Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5 introduce new competition into the evolving AI landscape.