Top Performers

ByteDance, Xiaomi, and SHEIN lead the list, showcasing the strength of Chinese brands in the entertainment, electronics, and fashion sectors.

Lenovo, Huawei, and AliExpress also remain strong contenders, emphasizing the diversity and innovation in China’s tech and e-commerce industries.

Sector Growth

Smart devices, automobiles, and e-commerce experienced the fastest brand power growth, with China’s industrial ecosystem and technological innovations providing a competitive edge.

Consumer electronics, entertainment apps, and online fashion account for a substantial portion of the brand power growth.

Brand Expansion

Chinese brands have successfully penetrated international markets, with notable growth in regions like Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.

Brands like BYD and NIO in the automotive sector, and OPPO and Vivo in consumer electronics, have expanded their global footprints, contributing to the increasing brand power.

Market Trends

The report highlights a shift in consumer preferences towards brands that offer meaningful differentiation and high engagement. Brands that have successfully created unique and compelling brand experiences have seen significant growth.

There has been a notable increase in the brand power of mid-sized brands, indicating a shift from the dominance of top-tier brands to a more competitive landscape.

Notable Brand Highlights

• ByteDance: As a global leader in digital content and social media, ByteDance’s platforms like TikTok have become household names worldwide, driving significant brand recognition and engagement.
• Xiaomi: Known for its high-quality yet affordable electronics, Xiaomi continues to expand its product lines and market reach, solidifying its position as a leading global brand.
• SHEIN: The online fashion retailer has disrupted traditional retail with its fast-fashion model, capturing a significant global market share and expanding rapidly across multiple regions.
• BYD: In the automotive sector, BYD’s focus on electric vehicles has positioned it as a key player in the global shift towards sustainable transportation solutions.
• OPPO and Vivo: These smartphone giants have continued to innovate and expand their international presence, offering advanced technology and appealing to a broad consumer base.

Strategic Insights

The report suggests that the key to the success of Chinese global brands lies in their ability to offer meaningful differentiation and engage deeply with consumers. Brands that can innovate and adapt to changing consumer preferences will continue to thrive in the competitive global market.

• Consumer Engagement: Successful brands have invested in understanding and meeting the functional and emotional needs of their consumers, creating strong brand loyalty and advocacy.
• Technological Innovation: Continuous investment in technology and innovation has enabled Chinese brands to stay ahead of the curve, offering cutting-edge products that resonate with global consumers.
• Global Strategy: A tailored approach to international markets, considering local preferences and cultural nuances, has been crucial for the expansion and acceptance of Chinese brands abroad.

Top 50 Brands from Kantar BrandZ 2024 China Global Brands

1. ByteDance
2. Xiaomi
3. SHEIN
4. Lenovo
5. Huawei
6. AliExpress
7. Haier
8. TEMU
9. OPPO
10. Hisense
11. TCL
12. Tencent
13. vivo
14. Chery
15. BYD
16. Anker
17. DJI
18. MiHoYo
19. OnePlus
20. Kuaishou
21. realme
22. GWM
23. TP-LINK
24. HONOR
25. Lynk & Co
26. MAXUS
27. Insta360
28. WORX
29. Lilith
30. Century Games
31. JAC
32. Roborock
33. CHANGAN
34. Geely
35. Midea
36. DiDi
37. POCO
38. ECOVACS
39. Trip.com
40. Magic Tavern
41. Habby
42. Tsingtao Beer
43. EcoFlow
44. Infinix
45. IGG
46. Kunlun
47. eufy
48. 37Games
49. NetEase Games
50. LightInTheBox

BCG: The most innovative Chinese companies

Operational Highlights

AI and Cloud Services

CEO Robin Li noted the stability of Baidu Core’s online marketing revenue and growth in AI Cloud revenue driven by the optimization of their AI technology stack. The ERNIE family of models has been expanded with several lightweight versions, enhancing affordability and efficiency for various applications.

Intelligent Driving

Baidu’s Apollo Go, the autonomous ride-hailing service, provided approximately 826,000 rides in Q1 2024, a 25% increase year-over-year. As of April 2024, Apollo Go has provided over 6 million cumulative rides.

Mobile Ecosystem

In March 2024, Baidu App’s monthly active users (MAUs) reached 676 million, a 3% increase year-over-year. Managed Page accounted for 50% of Baidu Core’s online marketing revenue, demonstrating significant user engagement.

AI Developer Community

The PaddlePaddle developer community grew to 13 million by mid-April 2024. Baidu launched and improved tools on its MaaS (Model as a Service) platform, facilitating the development of AI-native applications and customized models for enterprise customers.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Total revenues for Q1 2024 were RMB31.5 billion (US$4.37 billion), a 1% increase year-over-year.
  • Revenue from Baidu Core was RMB23.8 billion (US$3.30 billion), a 4% increase year-over-year, driven by a 3% rise in online marketing revenue
  • 6% increase in non-online marketing revenue, primarily from the AI Cloud business.
• Operating Income: Operating income was RMB5.5 billion (US$760 million), a 10% increase year-over-year.
  • Baidu Core operating income was RMB4.5 billion (US$629 million), with a 19% operating margin.
  • Non-GAAP operating income was RMB6.7 billion (US$924 million), with Baidu Core contributing RMB5.6 billion (US$774 million).
• Net Income: Net income attributable to Baidu was RMB5.4 billion (US$755 million), a 6% decrease year-over-year.
  • Non-GAAP net income attributable to Baidu was RMB7.0 billion (US$971 million), reflecting a 22% increase year-over-year.
  • Non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS were RMB19.91 (US$2.76), up 24% year-over-year.
• EBITDA: Adjusted EBITDA was RMB8.2 billion (US$1.14 billion), maintaining a 26% margin. Adjusted EBITDA for Baidu Core was RMB7.1 billion (US$986 million), with a 30% margin.

Since the beginning of Q1 2024, Baidu has returned US$229 million to shareholders, bringing the total repurchase to US$898 million under the 2023 share repurchase program.

The user base has exceeded 200 million, with daily API calls also surpassing 200 million. The service now caters to 85,000 customers and has more than 190,000 AI-native applications developed using the Qianfan platform.

Robin Li also noted that one doesn’t need to know coding to create certain applications; it’s possible to develop smartphone apps without programming. AI is fostering a wave of creative energy. “The future of application development will be as simple as making a short video; everyone will be a developer,” Li stated.

After officially announcing the open access to “Ernie Bot” in August last year, Baidu has on one hand used large models to rebuild client-side products for consumers and integrated AI features across multiple Baidu products. On the other hand, in the business sector, it has launched the enterprise-level one-stop large model platform “Qianfan Large Model Platform” through its cloud business.

Baidu’s GenAI App Offers Digital Twin Creation

In early 2024, Baidu has announced an innovative feature within its Wenxin Yiyan app (its GenAI product; a.k.a. Ernie Bot) that allows users to create digital twins with unprecedented ease. Both iOS and Android users can access this feature for free upon updating to the latest version of the app.

The new function simplifies the creation of a digital twin to just a photo and three voice recordings. Users can customize their digital counterpart with a unique name, voice, and even MBTI personality type. This flexibility extends to the choice of making their digital twin public or keeping it private, catering to various needs such as companionship, knowledge exploration, and entertainment.

Traditionally, creating a digital twin involved complex processes like 3D scanning to create a model, texturing through rendering technologies, and integrating motion capture and voice synthesis. Baidu’s latest update significantly reduces the complexity and time required to create a digital persona.

Baidu also teased upcoming themes for digital twins, including various New Year backgrounds and exclusive digital personas for a “mysterious national idol,” AI God of Wealth, and AI family portraits among other activities.

Recently at the tenth Wave Summit, a biannual deep learning developer conference hosted by Baidu, the Chinese AI giant unveiled remarkable achievements in artificial intelligence.

Ernie Bot has reached a new milestone, surpassing 100 million users as of Dec 2023.

ERNIE Bot: A Versatile AI Tool

Since its public release on August 31, 2023, ERNIE Bot has rapidly become an indispensable tool for users across diverse fields. It has generated 3.7 billion words of text in workplace environments, aiding over 2 million users, according to information CIW received from Baidu.

ERNIE Bot’s versatility is further highlighted by its ability to write 300 million lines of code and process 400 million words of contracts, showcasing its utility in technical and legal domains. Additionally, it has created 5 million travel itineraries and drafted 10.83 million messages of care and support, reflecting its wide-ranging applications in personal and emotional contexts.

The popularity of ERNIE Bot is also reflected in the user feedback, with 20 million likes and appreciations, signifying high satisfaction and reliance on this AI tool.

Technical Innovation and Industry Empowerment

The Wave Summit also shed light on Baidu’s commitment to technical innovation and industry empowerment through its PaddlePaddle platform. Dr. Haifeng Wang, Chief Technology Officer of Baidu, revealed that PaddlePaddle has been instrumental in supporting over 10.7 million developers and 235,000 enterprises.

A staggering 860,000 models were created using the platform as of December 2023, indicating the platform’s significant impact on AI development and application.

The Future of ERNIE Bot and Baidu’s AI Initiatives

The continuous improvement of the ERNIE Foundation Model, which saw a 32% overall performance enhancement in just two months, clearly indicates Baidu’s dedication to advancing AI technology.

ERNIE Bot’s growing popularity and increasing user inquiries highlight the potential and demand for advanced AI solutions in various industries.

Baidu’s achievements with ERNIE Bot and the PaddlePaddle platform underscore the company’s position as a leader in China’s AI innovation. As Baidu continues to break new ground in AI technology, the global community eagerly anticipates further advancements and applications that will transform industries and everyday life.

originality.ai’s founder and CEO, Jonathan Gillham, recently wrote an in-depth analysis article discussing Baidu’s ERNIE Bot and its latest model- ERNIE 4.0, which you can find here.

In 2023, China’s ride-hailing companies experienced strong revenue growth and accelerated steps toward commercializing autonomous driving, marking a new phase in the industry’s development.

The sector saw rapid expansion with significant increases in both the number of ride-hailing platforms and order volumes.

By December 31, 2023, a total of 337 ride-hailing companies had obtained operating licenses, up by 39 companies from the previous year. The ride-hailing regulatory information exchange system processed 9.114 billion orders throughout the year, a 30.76% increase from the previous year.

Against this backdrop, ride-hailing companies achieved fast growth in performance. For example, in the first three quarters, Didi’s total revenue increased by 31.2% year-over-year, with its domestic travel and international business growing by 32.8% and 33.9%, respectively.

The commercial operation of autonomous taxis also made steady progress.

Ride-hailing platforms actively deployed commercial autonomous taxi services, offering smart travel solutions.

In August, Baidu Apollo’s autonomous driving service platform “Luobo Kuaipao” was officially launched in Wuhan’s Dongxihu District, providing citizens with autonomous driving services and achieving breakthroughs in cross-district travel and full unmanned night-time operations.

In September, Pony.ai obtained the first unmanned demonstration application license in Shenzhen, covering nearly 150 autonomous driving service stations across many high-frequency travel destinations, operating during peak morning and evening hours.

Technological advancements have shifted market competition from traffic to service quality, propelling the ride-hailing industry into a new stage of development.

China Internet Overview

This development is part of Baidu’s strategic expansion of its autonomous ride-hailing service platform, which now ensures uninterrupted service to meet diverse travel needs, including those at night.

In a series of strategic moves, Apollo Go introduced fully driverless rides across Wuhan’s Yangtze River in February 2024, showcasing its advanced capability in navigating complex terrains.

This was closely followed by the initiation of a robotaxi pilot operation on highways leading to Beijing Daxing Airport, positioning Beijing as the first world capital to embrace airport robotaxi services. These achievements highlight Baidu’s commitment to enhancing urban mobility and safety through technological innovation.

Wuhan, a leader in smart transportation, has seen autonomous vehicles cover over 3,378.73 kilometers in testing, serving a population of over 7.7 million.

With a fleet of 300 fully driverless vehicles, Apollo Go’s operations in Wuhan are a testament to Baidu’s pioneering role in the autonomous driving industry.

Additionally, in observance of International Women’s Day, Apollo Go has launched a campaign offering female users priority service during late-night hours, further emphasizing its user-centric approach. This service has garnered widespread approval, with a remarkable 97.12% five-star rating from users.

Since its inception, Apollo Go has provided over 5 million cumulative rides, reflecting Baidu’s commitment to expanding autonomous ride-hailing services across China.

With operations in over 10 cities, including Beijing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Chongqing, Apollo Go stands out as the premier provider of fully driverless robotaxi services, underscoring Baidu’s leading position in China’s autonomous driving evolution.

This partnership, announced on January 25, aims to revolutionize AI capabilities in Samsung’s flagship smartphones. The integration of ERNIE into Samsung’s Galaxy AI enhances the S24 Series with features like intelligent summarization, advanced typesetting, and real-time call translation.

This collaboration brings ERNIE’s content understanding and generation capabilities to the Samsung Note Assistant, enabling it to translate and summarize extensive text efficiently.

The S24 Series boasts AI-driven features such as real-time speech-to-text transcription, speaker differentiation, multi-language translation, and automated meeting minutes generation, thus streamlining cross-language communication and office tasks.

The S24 Series introduces the “Circle to Search” feature, allowing intuitive searches across texts, images, or videos via simple hand gestures powered by Baidu Search for accurate and quick results.

Chen Yifan, Vice President of Baidu, highlights ERNIE Bot’s potential for diverse applications, especially given its multimodal data processing and personalization capabilities.

Launched in October of the previous year, ERNIE 4.0 marks Baidu’s most advanced AI foundation model, already serving over 100 million users. Baidu AI Cloud simplifies AI-native application development, offering ModelBuilder and AppBuilder tools to ease the creation of customized AI models.

Global market intelligence firm IDC predicts a surge in AI-enabled devices in China, forecasting that by 2024, over 70% of devices will feature AI functionality, representing 55% of the market.

The fourth quarter of 2021 saw a year-on-year increase of 33% to US$7.7 billion. Canalys predicts that by 2026, the scale of the cloud infrastructure market in the mainland will reach US$85 billion, and the five-year compound annual growth rate will be 25%.

Visit here for AI Cloud market share.

Alibaba Cloud remains the leader with a 37% market share, ranking first in the cloud market in 2021, Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud second and third respectively, and Baidu AI cloud fourth. In 2021, the four cloud providers jointly accounted for 80% of the market share.

Huawei Cloud reached an 18% market share in 2021, with an annual growth of 67%. The rapid growth has widened the gap between Huawei cloud and Tencent Cloud, ranking second in the market.

Tencent cloud, the third-largest provider, accounted for 16% of the market share, an increase of 55%. Tencent Cloud grew steadily as a whole in 2021, with diversified growth in multiple sectors.

Baidu AI Cloud, the fourth-largest vendor, accounted for 9% of the market share, an increase of 55%.

Top 10 forecasts for China cloud computing market 2021-2024

China’s Public Cloud Services Market to Grow to 10.5% of global share by 2024

In 2020, the overall market size of global public cloud services (IAAs/PAAS/SaaS) reached US$312.42 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 24.1%, according to IDC.

The overall market size of China’s public cloud services reached US$19.38 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 49.7%, with the highest growth rate in all regions of the world. IDC predicts that the global share of China’s public cloud service market will increase from 6.5% in 2020 to more than 10.5% by 2024.

Check out market share of IaaS and PaaS markets in China here.

CIW Subscribers (Annual) can download the chart here to see the comparison of the cloud platforms in China.

Download China Internet Overview whitepaper here.

Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service, is now authorized to collect fares for robotaxi rides – completely without human drivers in the car – in Chongqing and Wuhan, two of China’s largest megacities.

Amid increasing regulatory approval of the expansion of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the permits reflect regulatory authorities’ strong recognition and trust in the strength of Baidu’s autonomous driving technology.

They also mark a key turning point for the future of mobility in China, leading to an eventual expansion of driverless ride-hailing services to paying users across the country.

The permits were granted to Baidu by government agencies in Wuhan and Chongqing’s Yongchuan District. Both cities have been pioneering new approaches to intelligent transportation in recent years, from developing infrastructure to updating new regulations for AVs.

Having received the permits, Baidu will begin to provide fully driverless robotaxi services in the designated areas in Wuhan from 9 am to 5 pm, and Chongqing from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, with five Apollo 5th gen robotaxis operating in each city.

The areas of service cover 13 square kilometers in the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone, and 30 square kilometers in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District.

First Driverless Permits in China for Autonomous Ride Hailing Services

Baidu received the first-ever permits in late April this year in China authorizing the company to provide driverless ride-hailing services to the public on open roads in Beijing.

This regulatory approval marks a significant milestone for the autonomous ride-hailing industry in China, indicating a regulatory openness to taking a further step toward a fully driverless mobility future.

With these permits issued by the head office of the Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD), ten autonomous vehicles without drivers behind the steering wheel will offer rides to passengers in a designated area of 60 square kilometers in Beijing.

These licensed cars will join an existing fleet provided by Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service, in the capital city of China. Starting April 28, 2022, users will be able to hail a driverless ride using the Apollo Go mobile app in daytime from 10:00 to 16:00.

Currently, Baidu has the largest autonomous driving fleet in China. In expanding its driverless vehicle services, Baidu has worked to meet the unique technical challenges of Beijing’s complex traffic environment. The company plans to add 30 more such vehicles at a later stage, expanding its fleet to provide more convenient driverless services to the public.

Baidu has a proven track record of over 27 million kilometers (16 million miles) of road testing accumulated in the past 9 years with zero traffic accidents, including mileage recorded by driverless test cars in multiple cities across China as well as in California.

In September 2020, Baidu became the first company in Beijing to offer autonomous ride-hailing services. Starting in November of last year, Baidu has been charging fees for the Apollo Go autonomous services offered to the public under granted commercial permits, though safety operators are required in the driver’s seat.

Apollo Go has expanded to 9 cities in China since its first launch in 2020, including all first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou), and five other cities (Chongqing, Changsha, Cangzhou, Yangquan and Wuzhen). There have been 213,000 orders on Apollo Go in Q4 2021, making it the global leader by order volume.

Baidu released intelligent vehicle solutions for automakers in China

Baidu showcases Fully Automated Driving and 5G Remote Driving Service

Baidu displayed Fully Automated Driving during Baidu World 2020 on 15 September 2020, the company’s annual technology conference that was held in cooperation with CCTV.

With Apollo’s new Fully Automated Driving capability, the AI system can independently drive without a safety driver inside the vehicle, a breakthrough that will accelerate the large-scale deployment of autonomous driving technology across China.

Zhenyu Li, Corporate Vice President of Baidu and General Manager of Intelligent Driving Group (IDG), demonstrated the technology in Beijing’s Shougang Park with CCTV anchor Xiaofeng Bao.

“The three core components of Apollo’s Fully Automated Driving technology are pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles, the ‘experienced AI driver’, and the 5G Remote Driving Service,” said Zhenyu Li during the demonstration.

With pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles as the foundation, the AI driving system is now capable of operating the vehicles independently, and the 5G Remote Driving Service allows remote human operators to intervene in case of emergencies.

Apollo’s leading technology in pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles is a key precondition for Fully Automated Driving.

In 2019, Baidu partnered with FAW Group and jointly developed Hongqi EV robotaxi, the first pre-installed and mass-produced robotaxi in China, which has since been deployed in unmanned driving tests in multiple cities including Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Cangzhou.

Compared with modified models, pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles better guarantee consistency and safety.

Apollo has also released its fifth-generation autonomous driving kit, and the first pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles that meet the requirements for fully automated operations will be launched soon.

With each new generation of Apollo vehicles, the cost will be halved while performance will increase by tenfold, said Zhenyu Li.

The “experienced AI driver” refers to the capacity of the AI system to control the vehicle independent of a human driver. Apollo has completed over six million kilometers of road testing with a record low of zero accidents.

Having carried over 100,000 passengers across 27 cities around the world, Apollo’s “experienced AI driver” is well-trained. It is capable of handling various technological challenges of unmanned driving and solving the overwhelming majority of possible issues on the road.

The 5G Remote Driving Service is an indispensable complement to the “experienced AI driver” and allows human operators to remotely access vehicles in the case of exceptional emergencies.

Powered by smart transportation systems, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies, and the high bandwidth and response speed of 5G networks, the 5G Remote Driving Service is engaged instantaneously to provide immediate assistance from remote human operators when the user or the system switches to parallel driving mode.

All remote human operators have completed over 1,000 hours of cloud-based driving training without any accidents, so they can ensure the safety of passengers and pedestrians under the non-autonomous driving mode.

As the “experienced AI driver” can handle most road conditions, extreme occasions that require human intervention are rare. Hence, one remote human operator will be able to manage multiple vehicles simultaneously, largely increasing efficiency compared to the traditional one operator per vehicle model.

With these advancements, unmanned driving will create a new ecosystem of shared transportation, and the autonomous driving industry will enter the stage of full commercialization in 2025, said Robin Li, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Baidu.

Apollo also announced new product and technological developments at the conference.

Vehicle manufacturer Weltmeister will launch a new model incorporating Apollo’s valet parking in 2021, which will be the first in China to be equipped with L4 autonomous valet parking technology.

It will be able to identify vacant parking slots in multistory parking garages and allow people to use the autonomous-parking and smart summons functions with one simple click.

In addition, DuerOS for Apollo with smart voice-interaction has been installed on over one million smart vehicles.

DuerOS for Apollo is partnering with over 60 major automotive brands and covers more than 500 vehicle models on the market.

According to IHS Markit’s latest “Report on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) Development Trends in the Chinese Market”, DuerOS for Apollo is the world’s most installed system for CAV.

The Apollo smart transportation solution “ACE Transportation Engine” has been put in use in nearly 20 cities in China.

Robin Li estimates that by 2025 major Chinese cities will no longer need to limit vehicle purchases and usage, and by 2030 most traffic congestion issues can be solved by higher transportation efficiency.

Smart transportation infrastructure based on V2X technologies promises to improve traffic efficiency by 15% to 30% and boost the contribution to GDP by 2.4% to 4.8% in absolute value.

During the smart transportation sub-forum at Baidu World 2020, Baidu launched Apollo 6.0, the latest version of its open platform, adding multiple cloud services to make it more accessible for developers.

The Apollo open platform has now released 600,000 lines of open source code, gathering 45,000 developers and 210 ecosystem partners globally.

China’s automobile sales up 16% in July 2020; new energy vehicles up 19%

With a per unit cost of RMB 250,000 (about $37,000), the arrival of Apollo RT6 is set to accelerate AV deployment at scale, bringing the world closer to a future of driverless shared mobility.

Baidu Apollo RT6’s steering wheel-free design unleashes more space to craft unique interiors, allowing for the installation of extra seating, vending machines, desktops, or gaming consoles.

At 4760mm long with a wheelbase of 2830mm, the rider-first Apollo RT6 delivers comfort with independent rear seating, ample rear legroom of 1050mm, a flat floor, and an intelligent interaction system.

The Apollo RT6 exterior features a revolutionary look that seamlessly integrates sensors on the sunroof alongside interactive lights and intelligent electric sliding doors to enhance the riding experience further.

Apollo RT6 integrates Baidu’s most advanced L4 autonomous driving system, powered by automotive-grade dual computing units with a computing power of up to 1200 TOPS.

The vehicle utilizes 38 sensors, including 8 LiDARs and 12 cameras, to obtain highly accurate, long-range detection on all sides. The safety and reliability of Apollo RT6 are backed by a massive trove of real-world data, a total test mileage of over 32 million kilometers (~20 million miles) driven by Baidu’s AV to date.

Speaking at Baidu World 2022, Zhenyu Li, senior corporate vice president of Baidu and general manager of Intelligent Driving Group (IDG), said the autonomous driving capability of Apollo RT6 is equivalent to a skilled driver with 20 years of experience.

Apollo RT6 is the first vehicle model built on Xinghe, Baidu’s self-developed automotive E/E architecture for fully autonomous driving. The vehicle is 100% automotive-grade and has full redundancy throughout the hardware and autonomous driving software.

Apollo Go has expanded to 10 cities in China since its launch in 2020, including all first-tier cities, and provided more than 1 million orders.

Baidu Wins First Driverless Permits in China for Autonomous Ride Hailing Services

Tencent continues to dominate mobile app usage time though its total share dropped to 35.7% from 39.5% while ByteDance increased its share to 21% from 15.8%.

Check out top mobile apps in 2021.

Dubbed the “Land of Hope”, the XiRang platform enables up to 100,000 online attendees to interact simultaneously in the same space.

According to Robin Li, Baidu CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder, intelligent transportation will see a significant transformation in the next 10-40 years that will greatly influence the future.

Purchase restrictions limiting the number of cars sold in China’s first-tier cities, and number plate restrictions reducing by 20% the number of cars on the roads on weekdays will be lifted within five years and improved traffic efficiency will solve urban congestion within 10 years.

Li believes that intelligent transportation can address three major problems: Firstly, it can reduce road traffic accidents by 90%. Secondly, the problem of urban congestion can be resolved. Lastly, autonomous driving and intelligent transportation will help reduce carbon emissions.

From autonomous driving to smart cars and smart roads, Baidu has deeply integrated AI, 5G, and cloud computing into the transportation sector.

With a total of 115,000 rides provided by the third quarter of 2021, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing platform “Apollo Go” has become the largest autonomous mobility service provider in the world.

Baidu’s future goal is to expand the “Apollo Go” service to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.

Also read: Top 10 AI Cities in China

Baidu AIR intelligent road system will achieve real-time optimization of “city-level” signal control at hundreds of thousands of road intersections, greatly enhancing vehicle safety over millions of kilometers across the country.

Baidu believes that automotive robots will be the ultimate form of vehicle transportation in the future. Having L4 intelligent driving capabilities, Baidu’s smart EV venture, Jidu Auto, has been designed to operate under the concepts of “free movement”, “natural communication”, and “self-improvement”.

Li said that Jidu is planning to release its first concept car in the first half of 2022, followed by mass production and delivery by 2023.

At the convention, Baidu Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang released Baidu AI Cloud digital avatar platform XiLing, which is a platform level product integrating digital avatar generation and content production.

It can provide creation and operation one-stop services such as virtual host, virtual idol, brand spokesperson creation and operation for radio, television, Internet, brand and other customers.

Apart from providing an “AI toolkit” to creators, Baidu Brain also provides the technological foundation for digital transformation in society and many industries. Baidu Brain’s approach relies on standardization, automation, and modularization for industrial mass production, which allows it to evolve into an AI mass production platform.

“Wenxin”, Baidu Brain’s recently-released technological breakthrough, is the world’s first knowledge-enhanced 100-billion-scale pre-trained language model and the largest Chinese-language monolithic model.

Baidu’s open-source deep-learning platform PaddlePaddle has garnered 4.06 million developers, served more than 157,000 enterprises and units, covered dozens of industries, and created almost 500,000 models. PaddlePaddle’s combined market share ranks first among China’s deep-learning platforms.

Computing power is one of the core elements to support AI development. Baidu created the base for green computing, including self-developed Kunlun AI chips, an AI heterogeneous computing platform Baige, and a green data center to support AI technology research and a wide range of applications.

Baidu Brain can support across 1,400 capabilities. Baidu AI Cloud can distribute the AI technology capabilities to various industries, contributing to digital transformation and intelligent enhancement of China’s industries, economy, and society.

Report: China growth AI companies overview

Under the agreement, Sanofi will leverage the LinearDesign platform to contribute to the optimization of mRNA sequences for human therapeutic and preventive uses.

This agreement marks a milestone for Baidu to use its strengths in computational biology to optimize mRNA vaccine and therapy designs in real-world pharmaceutical practice beyond Covid-19.

The emerging mRNA technology has rapidly advanced the science of vaccine and drug development for infectious diseases like COVID-19 and Baidu has already seen that combining mRNA with computational biology tools makes the process quicker and more effective and has the potential to further transform drug discovery.

While mRNA has proved to be an innovative technology for vaccine development, instability remains a major limitation that affects the storage, distribution, and efficacy of mRNA vaccines.

LinearDesign is a novel algorithm developed by Baidu researchers in 2020 specifically for mRNA sequence design. Experiments both in vitro and in vivo have demonstrated the effectiveness of LinearDesign in improving the stability and immunogenicity of Spike protein-encoding mRNA.

LinearDesign was inspired by two algorithms previously developed by Baidu and its collaborators: LinearFold, the world’s fastest algorithm for RNA secondary structure prediction, and LinearPartition, the world’s fastest base pairing probability prediction algorithm.

The LinearDesign program is part of Baidu’s ongoing effort to develop innovative computational biology technology aiming to accelerate novel drug discovery.