Khaberni - Chinese company Baidu announced the launch of its new artificial intelligence model Ernie 5.0, in a move that highlights the escalating competition in the AI sector in China.
The announcement coincides with Baidu's smart assistant reaching 200 million active monthly users, reflecting the rapid spread of Chinese technology.
Multimodal Model
Ernie 5.0, Baidu’s strongest model to date, relies on an Omni-modal architecture capable of processing text, images, audio, and video.
The model includes about 2.4 trillion parameters, placing it among the global giant models.
According to a report published by SCMP, and the LMArena list issued last week, Ernie-5.0-0110 ranked first among Chinese models, and eighth globally in text performance, surpassing prominent American models like OpenAI's GPT-5.1-High and Google's Gemini-2.5-Pro.
Exceptional Efficiency
Ernie 5.0 relies on a massive Mixture-of-Experts architecture with selective activation, where less than 3% of its parameters are used in each inference process, providing a balance between high performance and the efficient consumption of computing resources, making it a practical and powerful model simultaneously.
China's Semiconductor Race
In a related context, reports revealed that Kunlunxin, Baidu’s specialized semiconductor arm, submitted a confidential application for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, amid Beijing's push toward technological self-sufficiency, especially in sensitive fields like semiconductors, amidst American restrictions on advanced chip exports, and the uncertainty regarding the use of foreign chips like Nvidia H200.
Narrowing the Gap with the West
In a notable comment, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, pointed out that Chinese models might be about six months behind their American counterparts, but he affirmed the Chinese developers' ability to catch up quickly, with the biggest challenge being to present new quality innovations that transcend current limitations.
Accelerated Chinese Ecosystem
Data from Hugging Face indicates that Alibaba Cloud's Qwen models have surpassed 200,000 submodels, with cumulative downloads nearing one billion, averaging about 1.1 million downloads daily.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange witnessed the listing of companies Zhipu AI and MiniMax, reflecting investors' appetite to support Chinese AI companies, especially those that combine high efficiency and low operating costs.
With the launch of Ernie 5.0, Baidu reaffirms its commitment to enhancing its position at the heart of global AI competition, as the Chinese market experiences unprecedented rapid innovation.
