Chinese Tech Giant Baidu Launches an AI Venture Fund

Artificial intelligence startups seem to be very popular this season. Chinese search giant Baidu has announced plans to set up a venture fund with $145 million to support start-ups focused on content generated by AI applications. The company will also launch a competition for developers building applications from the ERNIE large language model (LLM) or integrating the model into their existing products, Reuters, which previously reported the news, said.

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AI Venture Fund

Google is reportedly participating in the latest round of funding for Runway AI, whose software can create images and videos based on just a few words. (According to The Information, Google is investing from its balance sheet rather than a private fund.) Meanwhile, in China, as in the US, leading companies are racing to dominate a world increasingly awash in productive AI. A few days ago, for example, Baidu's billionaire founder Robin Li said the company would soon launch a new version of a broad-language model that supports Ernie Bot, the ChatGPT-like service he first introduced in March.

Alibaba, another Chinese tech giant, said last month that its own big language model, Tongyi Qianwen, would be integrated into its businesses to improve user experiences. Tencent is also working on a base model called HunyuanAide. All are following the momentum of OpenAI's popular ChatGPT chatbot. But the use of ChatGPT was banned by the Chinese government in February. And that gave them a chance to potentially catch up.