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The Baidu shares jump by 10% after the release of new open source AI models

Zhejiang, China -March 16, 2023: A look at the logo of Ernie Bot, an AI -Chatbot service, which was developed by the Chinese search engine Baidu, March 16, 2023.

Long white | Future publication | Getty pictures

The shares of the Chinese tech giant Baidu were traded by 10.7% in Asia on Tuesday, since investors apparently reacted positively to the publication of two new AI models at the weekend.

Baidu released two new models for artificial intelligence on Sunday, including the latest version of its fundamental “Ernie” model and a new argumentation model, which was communicated with the rival of Deepseeks R1 model. CNBC is unable to check these requirements.

A argumentation model is a large voice model with which complex problems can be processed similar to people in order to disassemble the requests into smaller pieces and take several approaches into account before they generate answers.

According to Kai Wang, a senior equity analyst for Morningstar, the shares are probably a “delayed reaction” to the new models, since Baidu regains a leading position in the China's AI.

“The stock didn't get as much love as the other hyperskallers, but it is still a platform that benefits from a larger AI demand because companies need someone who helps them with hosting, scaling and computing power,” he said.

A hyperscaler refers to a large cloud computing company that offers massive data centers for calculating storage and requirements.

Baidu said on Sunday that his Ernie X1 argumentation model “delivers the performance of Deepseek R1 at only half of the price” and “a stronger understanding, planning, reflection and evolutionary skills,” said Reuters.

The Chinese Ki start-up Deepseek opened the AI ​​industry in January when it published its open source argumentation model R1, which competed with the models of American competitors, although it was claimed that it was produced to a fraction of the costs and with far less powerful chips.

Deepseek quickly overtook Baidu in the China's AI race, although the company was one of the first on the market that starts a chattbot-like chatbot with its Ernie Bot, according to Wei Sun, main analyst of artificial intelligence at Contrapoint Research, the other tech giants such as stating Alibaba And bytedance has also approached.

“Baidus competitiveness depends on whether its new models really deliver the promised performance and cost advantages,” said SUN, but noticed that the KI price design, especially on the Chinese market, is very liquid.

The latest Baidu models, similar to Deepseek R1, were published as open sourcing, which means that the source code is freely available for a possible change and redistribution.

This represents a change compared to Baidu's previous strategy to concentrate on proprietary models.

“By open sourcing of his models, Baidu tries to position his technology again as a industry standard, to strengthen its influence on the AI ​​community and to expand its market share,” said Sun.