Baidu Launches New AI Processor, Strengthens China's Position In Competition For Artificial Intelligence

JAKARTA Chinese technology giant Baidu Inc., launched two of the latest artificial intelligence processors (AI) at the Baidu World Conference 2025, as well as introducing a new generation of supercomputer systems and a large language model of Ernie 5.0. This step strengthens China's ambition to compete with the United States in the global AI control race.

Baidu shares surged on the Hong Kong stock exchange after the company announced the M100 and M300 chips, which are claimed to be capable of providing powerful, efficient and fully domestically developed computing solutions for Chinese companies.

Baidu, through its chip division Kunlunxin, has been developing an AI processor for more than a decade. The M100 chip is specifically designed to improve inference performance on AI models that use the mixture-of-experts (MOE) method, while the M300 supports both training and inference to train trillions of parameter-scale multimodal models.

The M100 chip is scheduled to launch in early 2026, while the M300 will follow in early 2027. For the record, training is a process of training AI models using large data, while inference is a stage when models that have been trained are used to make predictions or answer user requests.

In addition to chips, Baidu also introduced the Tianchi 256 supercomputer system, which combines 256 P800 chips to improve AI performance by 50% compared to the previous version. The system will launch in the first half of 2026, followed by Tianchi 512 in the second half of the same year.

The company even targets to build a giant supernode capable of connecting millions of chips simultaneously by 2030.

Baidu also launched Ernie 5.0, a multimodal large language model (LLM) with 2.4 trillion parameters, double the size of competing models such as Alibaba's Qwen3-Max and Kimi K2 from Moonshot AI.

According to Wang Haifeng, Baidu's Chief Technology Officer, Ernie 5.0 can understand and produce text, code, audio, images, and videos in an integrated manner, making it one of the most advanced multimodal models in the world today.

Baidu's move comes amid rising technological tensions between the US and China, especially after state-of-the-art export restrictions by the US government. A number of Chinese companies, including Huawei, are now aggressively developing their own chips and supercomputation systems to reduce dependence on Nvidia products.

With the launch of the M100 and M300 chips and the development of Ernie 5.0, Baidu emphasized his role as a major player in China's efforts to strengthen technological independence in the era of artificial intelligence.