Overview
- Ernie 5.0, a 2.4 trillion-parameter native full-modal model, is now available on Baidu Cloud after a public unveiling in Shanghai.
- The model uses a mixture-of-experts architecture with under 3% of parameters active per inference to handle text, images, audio, and video.
- Baidu says Ernie 5.0 outperforms Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-5 in reasoning and comprehension, though the comparisons are company-reported.
- Baidu’s Ernie-powered AI assistant reached 200 million monthly active users on January 20, indicating rapid adoption of its generative tools.
- Shares climbed nearly 10% to about HK$160.90, and Baidu also launched commercial Apollo Go robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi.