Baidu Unveils Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo to Challenge Alibaba’s Qwen and DeepSeek in China’s AI Race

Baidu has officially launched upgraded versions of its flagship artificial intelligence models, Ernie 4.5 Turbo and Ernie X1 Turbo, aiming to intensify competition in China's rapidly evolving AI market against rivals such as Alibaba's Qwen and the startup DeepSeek.

 

Key Features and Improvements

- Ernie 4.5 Turbo is Baidu’s flagship foundational AI model, offering faster processing speeds and significantly reduced costs—an 80% price cut compared to its predecessor Ernie 4.5. It now costs approximately $0.11 per million input tokens and $0.44 per million output tokens. The model boasts enhanced multimodal reasoning, improved logical reasoning, coding capabilities, and reduced hallucination, achieving an average benchmark score of 77.68, surpassing OpenAI’s GPT-4o score of 72.76.

 

- Ernie X1 Turbo is the upgraded version of Baidu’s flagship reasoning model, debuting in March 2025. It builds on the Ernie 4.5 Turbo model with deeper chain-of-thought reasoning, stronger problem-solving abilities, and advanced multimodal capabilities including image understanding. Baidu claims that X1 Turbo outperforms DeepSeek’s R1 and the latest DeepSeek V3 models. Its pricing is highly competitive at about 25% of DeepSeek R1’s cost, with $0.14 per million tokens for input and $0.55 per million tokens for output.

 

Strategic Context

Baidu’s CEO Robin Li emphasized that lowering the cost of large language models is crucial to removing barriers for developers, enabling a surge in AI applications such as ultra-realistic AI digital humans for live broadcasting, gaming, and e-commerce.

 

The company’s Ernie models power Baidu’s AI ecosystem, including its ChatGPT-style chatbot Ernie Bot, integrated into Baidu Search and Maps.

 

This launch comes amid fierce competition in China’s AI sector, where Alibaba’s open-source Qwen model and DeepSeek’s cost-efficient reasoning models have gained significant traction globally and domestically. Baidu has responded by committing to open-source its Ernie AI models starting June 30, reflecting a strategic pivot to embrace China’s government-backed open innovation principles and to better compete with Alibaba and DeepSeek.

 

Baidu also highlighted its infrastructure readiness, having established a cluster of 30,000 Chinese-made AI processors to support training and deployment despite U.S. restrictions on AI chip sales to China.

 

Market Impact

The introduction of Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo, with their superior performance and sharply reduced prices, is expected to reshape the competitive landscape in China’s AI large model market. Baidu’s move aims to regain momentum and market share from Alibaba and DeepSeek, both of which have made significant advancements in open-source AI and developer adoption.

 

Baidu’s rollout of Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo represents a strategic effort to challenge Alibaba’s Qwen and DeepSeek by offering faster, more capable, and more affordable AI models, reinforcing Baidu’s position as a leading AI innovator in China’s intensifying AI race.