Baidu Launches $145M Fund For AI Content Startups

Chinese search giant Baidu Inc has unveiled plans to establish a venture capital fund worth 1 billion yuan (USD 145 million) aimed at supporting startups focused on content generated by artificial intelligence applications.

The announcement comes as Baidu seeks to tap into the growing potential of AI-generated content and strengthen its position in the competitive AI market. By providing financial support and resources to emerging startups, the Chinese conglomerate is looking to encourage development of new applications and technologies in this rapidly evolving segment.

The company's decision to set up the fund reflects its commitment to fostering innovation in the field of AI-generated content.

In addition to the venture capital fund, Baidu also announced the launch of a competition targeting developers who can build applications utilizing its ERNIE large language model (LLM) or integrate the model into their existing products. ERNIE, developed by Baidu Research, is a natural language processing model that has gained recognition for its capabilities in generating high-quality content.

This move by Baidu comes in response to the rising prominence of large language models, such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has demonstrated remarkable success as an AI-powered chatbot. Following the global trend, nearly 80 organisations in China have released their own LLMs since 2020, surpassing the number of releases in the United States this year, according to a recent report.

Baidu's introduction of its own AI-powered LLM, called Ernie Bot, earlier this year placed the company among the growing list of Chinese tech firms venturing into this domain. Notably, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has also made significant strides in developing its own LLM.