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Baidu Inc (NASDAQ: BIDU) shares surged to a near three-year high in Hong Kong trading on Thursday, highlighting renewed investor confidence after the Chinese technology giant officially released its most advanced artificial intelligence model, Ernie 5.0. The strong performance underscores Baidu’s growing influence in China’s fast-expanding AI sector and its ambition to compete with global leaders in artificial intelligence.
Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares (HK:9888) jumped more than 4% to HK$160.10, significantly outperforming the broader market as the Hang Seng index slipped by around 0.2%. The rally extended gains from the previous session, when reports revealed that Baidu’s Ernie AI platform had surpassed 2 million monthly active users, signaling accelerating adoption of the company’s generative AI ecosystem.
During an AI-focused conference held in Shanghai, Baidu announced the official rollout of the Ernie Big Model 5.0, also known as the Wenxin Big Model 5.0. Although the model was first unveiled in November 2025, this marks its full commercial release, with availability now expanded through Baidu’s cloud platform. The move strengthens Baidu Cloud’s position as a core driver of the company’s long-term growth strategy.
According to Baidu, Ernie 5.0 is built on native full-modal modeling, enabling advanced processing across text, images, audio, and video. The model reportedly features a massive 2.4 trillion parameters, placing it among the most powerful large language models currently available. Baidu claims that Ernie 5.0 outperforms comparable global AI models, including Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-5, particularly in reasoning, comprehension, and complex task execution.
Baidu is widely regarded as one of the frontrunners in China’s AI development race. Over the past two years, the company has consistently increased investment in artificial intelligence, focusing on foundational models, cloud-based AI services, and real-world enterprise applications. The successful launch of Ernie 5.0 not only reinforces Baidu’s leadership in China’s AI market but also positions the company as a serious global contender in next-generation artificial intelligence technologies.
