Baidu ()
“As we move into 2017, Baidu’s strategic evolution from a mobile-first to an AI-first company continues to gain momentum.” ~ Robin Li, Chairman and CEO, Baidu, Inc.
There was a time when Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) was primarily a Chinese language Internet search provider, often dubbed as the ‘Google of China.’ In recent years, Baidu embarked on a new journey that makes it a search, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous driving company that is working towards innovative, next-generation products and revenue streams.
Baidu is leading the AI revolution in the mainland with huge investments, collaborations and acquisitions. Here’s a look at Baidu’s AI initiatives (focusing on 2017) in the backdrop of the new guidelines by the Chinese government.
Platform & Partnerships
AI technologies encompass deep learning, image recognition, computer vision, robotics, collaborative systems, machine learning and natural learning process, among other things. Through the years, Baidu has accelerated its AI resourcefulness under the umbrella of Baidu research through its Big Data Lab, Institute of Deep Learning and Silicon Valley AI Lab.
The year 2017 kick-started with Baidu and Ainemo unveiling ‘Little Fish’—a voice-controlled family robot powered by DuerOS, which is Baidu's AI implementation. Like other AI assistants (such as Alexa), users can interact with Little Fish—called Xiaoyu Zaijia in Chinese—via voice conversations to make calls, fish for news or play music. As an added feature, it offers video chat and the option to stream visual content directly from the device.
Baidu has been investing in autonomous vehicle technology and development since 2015. As a further push to its strategy, Project Apollo—a software platform to propel autonomous vehicle technology and adoption—was announced in April. Baidu intends to introduce fully autonomous driving capabilities by 2020. The platform has over 50 partners, including the most prominent names from the automobile and technology space.
While Baidu’s DuerOS is already popular with more than 100 partners (such as NVIDIA, Haier, Media, HTC, Vivo, and Harman) using the platform. In July this year, Baidu took an important step by releasing the DuerOS Open Platform, which will enhance the teamwork between more developers and Baidu to move closer to DuerOS’s goal, “to become the fundamental operating framework for every conversational device, essentially creating the ‘Android’ for the AI era.”
Further, Baidu and NIVIDIA (NVDA) partnered to bring AI technology to cloud computing, self-driving vehicles and AI home assistants—this includes bringing next-generation NVIDIA Volta GPUs to Baidu Cloud, adoption of NVIDIA's DRIVE PX platform for Baidu's autonomous car initiative, optimizing Baidu's PaddlePaddle for NVIDIA Volta GPUs as well as adding Baidu's DuerOS to NVIDIA SHIELD TV.
Continuing with the string of partnerships, Microsoft (MSFT) and Baidu recently announced plans of collaboration “to take the technical development and adoption of autonomous driving worldwide.” Microsoft (already a member of the Apollo alliance) will provide global scale for Apollo outside of China with the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Acquisitions
In February, Baidu acquired Raven Tech, a Chinese start-up founded in 2014, specializing in AI-based smart home systems. Baidu’s Little Fish is already a contender to become the top home assistants in the world. Now, with Raven, Baidu has upped its chances of tapping the Chinese smart home industry.
Baidu’s second acquisition this year has been U.S.-based startup xPerception. As a part of Baidu’s California-based research unit, xPerception will continue to work in computer vision to enhance self-driving and augmented reality capabilities.
The third and recent acquirement has been KITT.AI—providers of natural language and speech technologies. KITT.AI joins Baidu to “continue a joint mission of making the complex world simpler with (natural language understanding) technologies.”
China & AI
In February, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) commissioned Baidu to lead the charge in setting up an online national engineering laboratory. The laboratory will research on and implement deep learning technologies in collaboration with Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China Information and Communication Research Institute, China Electronic Technology Standardization Institute and other units.
AI is now officially on China’s radar. China’s State Council has recently issued guidelines on AI development wherein it aims at becoming a global innovation center in this field by 2030 with an estimated total output value of AI industries at $147.80 billion (1 trillion yuan). The State Council calls for an “open and coordinated AI innovation system” to develop not only the technology, but also products and market. Estimates suggest that China’s total investments in AI enterprises reached $2.6 billion in 2016.
Final Word
With the government fervently promoting an AI economy, the integration of AI to real-world applications is likely to be sooner than expected. In the near future, we will see a smart and intelligent form of many conventionally run industries and businesses, powered by companies such as Baidu.
Baidu, Inc. will report its Q2 earnings on July 27, 2017
The author has no position in any stocks mentioned. Investors should consider the above information not as a de facto recommendation, but as an idea for further consideration.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
