Baidu Inc. released a new artificial intelligence model that articulates its reasoning, in an apparent bid to regain momentum against up-and-coming rivals like DeepSeek.The Ernie X1 model by China’s internet search leader works similarly to DeepSeek R1 — which shocked Silicon Valley by offering comparable performance to the world’s best chatbots at a fraction of their development cost.

Chinese internet search giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence reasoning model Sunday and made its AI chatbot services free as ferocious competition grips the sector. Baidu also made the models free to use,

Baidu has introduced two new artificial intelligence (AI) models on March 16, including a reasoning-focused system that the company claims is on par with DeepSeek’s latest offering, marking a new phase in China’s intensifying AI race.

Chinese tech company Baidu said on Sunday it has launched two new artificial intelligence (AI) models, which are said to offer the same performance as the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek but at half the cost.