Baidu Unveils Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5 AI Models to Challenge DeepSeek and OpenAI

The Chinese tech giant claims its new AI models rival leading competitors in performance while offering significantly lower costs.

Baidu launched Ernie X1, a reasoning-focused AI model, and Ernie 4.5, a multimodal foundational model, positioning them as cost-effective alternatives to DeepSeek and OpenAI's offerings.
The Ernie X1 model is designed for enhanced reasoning, planning, and logical tasks, with Baidu claiming performance comparable to DeepSeek R1 at half the cost.
Ernie 4.5 supports multimodal inputs like text, images, audio, and video, and reportedly outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4.5 on several benchmarks while being significantly cheaper.
Baidu announced plans to make its Ernie AI models open-source by June 30, reflecting a broader industry trend toward open-source adoption initiated by DeepSeek.
The release highlights intensifying competition in the AI sector, with Chinese tech firms aiming to challenge U.S. dominance through innovation and affordability.