Baidu

Baidu, Inc. is a Beijing-headquartered multinational technology company, founded in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. As of December 2025, its core search platform commands a 62.4% share of the Chinese market, according to StatCounter Global Stats. The company has expanded into artificial intelligence and autonomous driving, anchored by the ERNIE large language model series; ERNIE 4.0, released in October 2023, powers a generative AI ecosystem including the ERNIE Bot chatbot, which became publicly accessible in August 2023 and surpassed 100 million users by early 2024. Baidu also operates Apollo Go, the world’s largest autonomous ride-hailing service, which provided over 1 million fully driverless rides in the fourth quarter of 2024. Listed on NASDAQ and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under ticker 9888, Baidu matters right now because its shift to AI infrastructure and autonomous driving represents a core bet on state-backed technological self-sufficiency, making it a bellwether for the commercial viability of China’s AI ambitions amid tightening U.S. chip export controls.