Image source: Baidu, which generates

ALL in AI by unbounded AI, is being surrounded by AI.

In 2025, with the popularity of DeepSeek and the access of major platforms and enterprises, the artificial intelligence market industry has undergone drastic changes. The open source free AI model poses new challenges to the business model of closed AI models. Who can Taking the lead in the new round of AI competition has become the focus of the market.

In recent years, there have been many players gathered in the domestic AI track, from major technology Internet manufacturers such as Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance to the "Six Little Dragons of AI" and the popular DeepSeek. For Baidu, startups are once again facing another major challenge after the transformation of AI strategic.

Baidu is one of the earliest companies in China to propose a comprehensive layout of AI technology. The earliest group of AI talents who left Baidu constitute a distinctive force in China's AI entrepreneurship trend, so Baidu was once called " AI Whampoa Military Academy, but whether it will repeat the mistake of "going to a late market" is very critical in every move next.

The missed AI "golden charge period"

How many days Previously, Baidu released its fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2024. Data showed that Baidu's total revenue in 2024 reached 133.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 1%, and its net profit was 23.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21%.

As one of the core businesses, Baidu's online marketing revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 17.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7%; in December 2024, the number of monthly active users of Baidu APP reached 679 million, which is more than It grew 2% in the same period last year, but it was down 3.55% from the previous quarter's 704 million.

Faced with this joint joys and sorrows, Li Yanhong pointed out in the earnings call: "The AI ​​cloud business showed strong momentum, with revenue increasing by 26% year-on-year, offsetting the weakness in our online marketing business. Growth is mainly due to the market's wide recognition of our AI capabilities. We will continue to invest in AI to ensure that we are always at the forefront of this technology trend. "

But want to stand at the AI ​​technology trend The cutting-edge is not easy. If Baidu can achieve related achievements comparable to OpenAI ChatGPT or Google DeepMind in the field of AI, AI will be successful. But at present, since Baidu proposed "ALL in AI" in 2017, AI has The accumulation period of technology's gold market has passed. Baidu, which has not left AI peers, is becoming increasingly difficult to return to the top of super giants with the help of AI.

Among Internet technology giants, "BAT" was once a tiered existence, but now few people talk about BAT again, because Baidu's revenue level is no longer on the same level as Alibaba and Tencent.

Alibaba's revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 280.154 billionYuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%, and Taotian Group's revenue alone reached 136.091 billion yuan; Tencent's revenue in the third quarter of 2024 was 167.193 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%. The revenue scale of the two giants exceeded that of Baidu Quan in a single quarter Annual revenue level.

At this year's earnings call, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming mentioned that in the next three years, Alibaba's investment in cloud and AI infrastructure will exceed the total of Alibaba's past ten years. Tencent has also recently passed Social software such as WeChat has taken big moves in the AI ​​field as a user tool, and the two giants have sufficient "food and grass" guarantees for fighting in the AI ​​field.

Is AI technology a chance to bring Baidu back to the ranks of giants? There should have been one, but the premise is whether Baidu can far surpass its Chinese counterparts or even reach the world's leading level in the AI ​​track.

Take OpenAI as an example. The company has been planning to deploy general artificial intelligence (AGI) since its establishment in 2015. It did not have very outstanding products at first, but with the continuous deepening of AI technology, it finally launched ChatGPT in 2022. It became popular quickly, triggering in-depth thinking and discussion on artificial intelligence from all walks of life around the world. It is still the leader in top AI models and has achieved another breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology after Google DeepMind's AlphaGo series.

In 2025, if SoftBank Group completes a US$40 billion investment in OpenAI, the company's post-investment valuation will reach US$300 billion. What does this mean? Alibaba's US stock market value is about US$340 billion, while Tencent's market value is about US$514 billion. For example, if Baidu was the first to launch "ChatGPT"-level AI application in China after the transformation of "ALL in AI" and can continue to lead technology, the current market value of Baidu's US stock market is about US$32 billion, and the It is not impossible for Alibaba and Tencent to be on par, but it’s a pity that there is no if.

Baidu began to carry out research and application of deep learning in early 2012. From 2013 to 2015, Baidu Deep Learning Research Institute (IDL), Big Data Laboratory (BDL), and Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SVAIL) ) and others were established one after another, and once gathered many world-class experts in the field of AI at home and abroad. Even if the transformation of "ALL in AI" was announced in 2017, it was not too late from the time node. The key is that such AI gold storage How to develop AI technology layout, what kind of AI technology to pursue the world's top technology level or to rush to commercialize AI, and choose different endings that directly affect the story.

DeepSeek can generate influence in the field of AI that impacts global technology giants. It is actually a good model to achieve the results of the OpenAI flagship o1 model, but there are still some that will be released under OpenAI. GPT-4.5 and GPT-5, who will benchmark against China's AI companiesIt is still unknown whether Baidu can get the first place in the physical examination.

From the long-term perspective, whether Baidu can become the representative of China's top AI technology is the key to the AI ​​turnaround, but now there is no time and opportunity to accumulate strength and is in a fierce competition. The difficulty coefficient has soared several times compared to ten years ago.

The "open source and free" transformation forced by the force

Once When the PC era transformed from the mobile Internet era, Baidu missed a chance to take off because it fell behind in the competition. The recent changes in the AI ​​market and the fierce competition for "AI entrances" have made Baidu a little passive, even though it has deepened its efforts in AI technology. After many years, it seems that the AI ​​market has not been able to take the pulse of the development of the AI ​​market.

Recently, Tencent has leveraged DeepSeek's popularity to focus on the AI ​​market. "National Application" WeChat access to DeepSeek-R1 full-blooded version instantly brought unprecedented market attention. Tencent also used its huge user base to launch an impact on the "AI search" market. Data shows that the merged monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat and WeChat The number has reached 1.382 billion, and the development of AI search habits for these users is undoubtedly huge in business potential.

Immediately afterwards, the whole family of products such as Tencent Yuanbao AI model, ima, QQ browser, Tencent AI code assistant, Tencent Cloud Intelligent Computing, etc., completed the DeepSeek access and followed the trend to catch up with the market.

Ali has become the target of market re-evaluation with the help of "Apple AI" hitchhiking. According to data and related reports by research agency QuestMobile, Apple has about 250 million users in China, and Apple AI has been in China. Baidu, which has been deeply engaged in AI technology for many years, should become the first priority partner, but Apple finally chose it first. Ali.

Canalys data shows that in the third quarter of 2024, Alibaba Cloud occupied 36% of the cloud market in mainland China, ranking first in the market; in addition, after Deepseek became popular in the global open source community, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen Qwen series models have also become a highly-watched existence. Currently, the global download volume of Qwen series models has reached 180 million, and the total number of cumulative derivative models has reached 90,000, surpassing Meta Llama to become the world's largest open source model series. Whether it is for consideration of cloud computing or AI technology, it gives Apple a sufficient reason to choose first.

The new giant ByteDance formed the AGI long-term research team "Seed Edge" in January 2025. According to public data, in December 2024, the monthly active users of its AI application Doubao App were strong. Breakthrough of 75 million is a strong competitor that Baidu's "new search" tool Wen Xiaoyan App cannot ignore, and according to QuestMobile data shows that the number of users of ByteDance's Douyin after deduplication was as high as 1.108 billion in 2025, becoming the most powerful channel and engine to promote AI applications.

Faced with the wave of DeepSeek and the AI ​​competition between Alibaba, Tencent and Bytes, Baidu's "taking advantage of the situation" showed some weaknesses.

During the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Li Yanhong said in a public speech that everyone should not write AI models, but should remove applications. He mentioned that there is no application, and there is only a basic model, whether it is open source or closed source Not worthless.

But in order to keep up with the changes in the market rhythm, Baidu, which has been engaged in closed AI models, recently announced a series of operations in accessing DeepSeek. For example, Baidu Search will fully connect to DeepSeek and Wenxin big model in-depth search Function, Wenxin Mockup announced that it will be free from April 1, and Wenxin Mockup 4.5 series will be launched and open sourced in the next few months, etc., but this adjustment alone is not obvious in the current AI market competition. , How to build a new business model after opening source is also a major difficulty. Baidu, which is difficult to lead the market development situation, is becoming increasingly unstoppable.

Wenxin Mockup 4.5 series can bring sensational effects in the industry after open source may be the key to Baidu's next move, but open source is free does not mean that the technical level requirements are relaxed. Baidu has AI technology Whether innovation can surpass the open source influence of DeepSeek and Alibaba Qwen, and whether it can resist the rise of strong applications such as bean bags in free applications, can be said to be full of challenges.

Baidu still needs to "solve" inward

There are some more Market changes come from the segmented track of AI technology.

At the beginning of 2025, two companies, Zongmu Technology and Tucson, which were once regarded as autonomous driving unicorns, were exposed to have a worrying future. Zongmu Technology has fallen into a survival dilemma due to problems such as capital flow and failed listing; Tucson Future has experienced fluctuations such as management struggles and transformation difficulties, and announced that some of its teams will be disbanded.

The market value of Wenyuan Zhixing and Pony Intelligence, which have been successfully listed, has risen recently. As of February 21, 2025, the total market value of Wenyuan Zhixing (WRD) was US$6.703 billion, and Pony Intelligence (PONY) ) The total market value is US$9.172 billion.

But "insufficient blood-making ability" is still a dilemma that the autonomous driving track has not yet escaped. Financial report data shows that Wenyuan Zhixing's total revenue in the first three quarters of 2024 was 220 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 14.3%, but its net loss was as high as 1.924 billion yuan, and its adjusted net loss was also 556 million yuan; Pony Ma Zhixing's first half of 2024 Revenue was US$24.72 million and net loss was US$51.78 million.

In addition to the Wenxin big model, Baidu's focus on the field of autonomous driving is also difficult to become a strong business growth in the short term.The market changes are not optimistic. With the rapid layout of Huawei, Didi Chuxing and other people in the field of autonomous driving, almost all car companies are accelerating the smart cockpit and self-developed autonomous driving technology, and there is another competitive situation everywhere. Radish runs quickly and wants to break out.

It can be said that if you cannot achieve the strongest in the industry in the AI ​​field, after falling into the second or even the third echelon, the competitive environment will be more crowded.

According to the "Global Digital Economy White Paper (2024)", as of July 2024, there were 1,328 artificial intelligence models worldwide, and the number of Chinese models accounted for 36%. Based on this proportion, The number of AI models in China is about 478, and there are many manufacturers in various fields involved.

From the current trend, the AI ​​industry is destined to be a situation where it is blooming everywhere. How high can Baidu take off from the AI ​​trend? This is actually not a new problem caused by changes in the market environment, but Baidu urgently needs it. An old question to solve inwardly:

What is missing in the process of transforming from the PC era to the mobile Internet era, and then moving from the mobile Internet era to the AI ​​era?