"One thing we learned from DeepSeek is that open-sourcing the best models can greatly help adoption," said Baidu's Robin Li.

China: Baidu will make the source code of its Ernie 4.5 AI chatbot publicly available after being inspired by DeepSeek's success. The company aims to enhance adoption of its AI models. Baidu also reported a slight drop in revenue but saw a growth in its Cloud AI unit.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu said on Friday it would make its next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30, a major shift in strategy as competition heats up.Baidu CEO Robin Li had long advocated for closed-source models as the only viable path for AI development,

The company, the operator of China’s most popular search engine, announced the plan today. Reuters reported that the initiative centers on an upcoming family of Ernie models dubbed the Ernie 4.5 series. Baidu will start rolling out the LLM series to users in the coming months and plans to open-source its code on June 30.