- The Chinese technology company Baidu has unveiled two new artificial intelligence models called Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5.
- The firm claims that these models match the performance-to-cost ratio of those offered by OpenAI and DeepSeek.
- China is progressively adopting open-source models.
Baidu, China's answer to Google , has unveiled two new AI models.
On Saturday, Baidu released Ernie X1, a reasoning model it said "delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price."
The firm also debuted a multifunctional foundational model named Ernie 4.5, which they claim outshines GPT-4.5 across several benchmarks yet comes with a price tag that is merely 1% of what GPT-4.5 costs.
Baidu announced that it will be releasing its chatbot, Ernie Bot, for public use starting April 1, earlier than planned.
The tech giant said it will "progressively integrate" Ernie 4.5 and X1 into its product ecosystem, including Baidu Search, China's dominant search engine.
As Baidu unveils its recent updates, Silicon Valley grapples with the expenses associated with AI models, primarily driven by the newest offerings from various companies. DeepSeek , a startup founded by the hedge fund High Flyer from China.
In December, DeepSeek introduced a substantial language model named V3, followed by the unveiling of a reasoning model dubbed R1 in January. According to reports, these models are deemed equal to or superior to comparable offerings from OpenAI yet come at prices ranging from 20-to-40 times less expensive. analysis from Bernstein Research .
OpenAI versus DeepSeek versus Baidu
Tokens are the smallest unit of data an AI model processes. Companies price models according to how many input tokens a model processes and output tokens it generates.
For Ernie 4.5, Baidu mentioned that the pricing for input and output tokens begins at just 0.004 Chinese yuan per thousand input tokens and 0.016 per thousand output tokens.
BI converted those figures into US dollars to understand how chat models from OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Baidu compare against one another. While Baidu's cost claims against OpenAI's latest, " emotionally intelligent" GPT-4.5 Take a look at, DeepSeek's V3 narrowly edges out Ernie 4.5 when considering the price.
When it comes to reasoning models, converting to USD indicates that Ernie X1 is the most affordable option, costing less than 2% of what OpenAI’s o1 model costs.
Aside from cost savings, people who have tested Ernie appear to be pleased. "I’ve been using it for hours and am really impressed by its performance," Alvin Foo, a venture partner at Zero2Launch, commented in an X post.
The newest offerings from Baidu highlight both the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China in the artificial intelligence sector as well as China’s increasing adoption of open-source models.
What we discovered from DeepSeek is that making the top models available as open source can significantly boost their usage, Robin Li Baidu’s CEO stated during a February earnings call, “Once the model becomes open-source, individuals inherently wish to test it out of curiosity, aiding in wider dissemination.”
Baidu announced on X in February that the Ernie 4.5 series would become publicly available starting June 30. However, they did not provide any comments regarding the X1 model.
China, aiming to be a worldwide frontrunner in artificial intelligence by 2030, is causing quite a stir with its advancements. slate of new models and agents, including Alibaba's open-source model, QwQ-32B, and AI agent Manus , which was released earlier this month.
So far, those within the AI community appeared excited about the upcoming release of DeepSeek's R2. However, the Ernie series might pose some significant competition.
Correction: March 17, 2025 An earlier edition of this article incorrectly stated that Baidu has made its models openly available. According to the information provided, the Ernie 4.5 series is scheduled to be released as open-source code at the end of June; however, there was no mention of the X1 model being open-sourced.
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