Baidu Open-Sources Its Ernie AI Model to Compete with OpenAI
On 30 June 2025, Baidu has officially open-sourced its powerful AI model Ernie 4.5, making it freely available to developers and companies around the world.
This is China’s biggest public AI release since DeepSeek.
What’s Open-Sourced?
Baidu released the Ernie 4.5 series under the Apache 2.0 license, which means anyone can use, modify, and build on top of it for free—even for commercial projects.
Ernie 4.5 is a multimodal model, meaning it can handle both text and images.
It is designed to perform well in tasks like: Reading and understanding language, Answering questions, Describing or generating images, Handling complex reasoning.
Why It Matters
Innovation: Ernie 4.5 is a multimodal heterogeneous MoE model, capable of handling text and images with advanced reasoning and efficient performance across devices
Strategic move: This marks China’s biggest public AI launch since DeepSeek, signaling a major step in challenging OpenAI, Anthropic, and other proprietary Western models
Cheaper Access for Developers: Baidu also cut the prices of its Ernie API by up to 97% for some features.
This makes it more affordable for startups, researchers, and small businesses to use high-quality AI tools.
Competitive edge: Ernie has ~23 million monthly users and an 18% share of developer usage—strong metrics, though still trailing leaders—while offering free access and cutting API prices by ~80%
Global positioning: Seen as a strategic countermove to U.S. models and potential sanctions, Baidu’s open‑source release builds China’s AI autonomy and attracts a global developer community
What’s Next?
Baidu plans to support the open-source community around Ernie, offering tools, training data, and model weights.
Developers worldwide can now build their own AI apps using Ernie, customize it, and even improve it.
News Gist
Baidu has open-sourced its powerful Ernie 4.5 AI model under the Apache 2.0 license, offering free access and major price cuts.
This move challenges OpenAI, boosts China’s AI independence, and expands global access to advanced language and image capabilities.
Baidu Open-Sources Its Ernie AI Model to Compete with OpenAI
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