Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, announced on Wednesday it is setting up a $145m venture capital fund for generative artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups.
The fund, which has been named Baidu Ventures, will focus on companies with AI products such as speech recognition, natural language processing, and more.
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Robin Li, Baidu CEO, said: “We believe that AI is the next big wave of innovation, and we want to be at the forefront of this revolution.
“By investing in AI start-ups, we can help to accelerate the development of this technology and bring its benefits to a wider range of people,” he added.
Baidu’s announcement follows in the footsteps of other Chinese tech companies that have set up venture capital funds for AI businesses.
Both Alibaba and Tencent, two of China’s biggest tech companies, have already set up funds for AI companies.
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By GlobalDataThe increasing importance of implementing AI into companies and processes has led Chinese tech giants to take note and race to get ahead of the curve.
The company also said on Wednesday that it will be hosting a competition that welcomes developers to build off its ERNIE large language model (LLM).
Baidu introduced Ernie Bot, which uses the tech from its LLM, as a rival to OpenAI’s mega-successful ChatGPT.
The search giant is now using Ernie Bot in its search product, introducing something called “AI Mate” which helps users with their searches – something similar to what Microsoft did with its Bing Chat.
Baidu is one of 80 Chinese tech companies that have released their own LLMs in the last two years.
The dramatic increase in the amount of LLMs forced the Chinese government to release draft regulations on the use of generative AI last month.
All companies wanting to use generative AI in any capacity must submit security assessments to authorities before launching, according to the draft legislation.
GlobalData is the parent company of Verdict and its sister publications.
